


Summertime

by CryingKilljoy



Category: Original Work
Genre: 1812, France - Freeform, M/M, Napoleon - Freeform, Russia, french invasion of russia, historical fiction - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-07 19:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 20
Words: 36,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10367433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CryingKilljoy/pseuds/CryingKilljoy
Summary: While in St Petersburg, Russia for the summer, French aristocrat Olivier Renaud develops a strong connection to street urchin Alexei Kozlov. However, when Napoleon's army invades Russia, their summer together is cut short by enlistment in the military. Their countries are at war, but are they ready to become enemies?





	1. literally just shut the fuck up

[Summertime by Ella Fitzgerald](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av2DKz0bPHI)

Saint Petersburg in the evening is quite the treat for the eyes. The sun wraps itself in beautiful fabrics of red, orange, yellow, and pink, while the hum of the street calms to a song specifically for those late to dinner. It's almost perfect, except for the current ambience of sound that differs from its normal state, disturbed by a verbal altercation concerning the ethics of sending young men to die systematically in heaps.

I'm not entirely sure where the discussion came from. I believe the two boys struck up conversation on the street, sifted through various topics, and eventually came to a halt on this one -- this unfortunate subject. Nevertheless, I _am_ sure that it's becoming more and more fueled as it goes on. It's escalating higher by the second, and I'm scared for the climax.

On one side of the debate, there is a boy that I've seen around but have never talked with. Anatole, the only person that chooses to be around me so often, says that he's trouble, a real hothead with strong opinions that could get him into a serious mess. Because I don't like him, I have no qualms about saying that he's pretty ugly, with a nose that sticks out too far and teeth that he never tends to, even though _he's_ the financially stable one and should be able to afford some dental hygiene products. His stance is that war is necessary in order to achieve a country's goals, and that we should skip straight to it when we need to solve.

On the other side of the debate, there is a boy of a slightly older age that I've never seen before. His Russian is very good, which I only bring up because I detect the slightest of accents that I can identify as French from the babble I've heard from Russian nobles passing by where I usually rest on the street. His stance is that war should not exist as long as there are words to negotiate a solution to the problem, and that using people's sons and fathers and husbands is unethical. Although I've never met him, my opinion lies with his, and it's not just because I want to spite the other guy.

Both sides are heated with anger, each believing that the other person is unbelievably ignorant and has no idea how the human psyche functions when presented with difficult situations. However, the pro-war boy looks distressed and as if he's on the brink of having a stroke, meanwhile the anti-war boy's anger stems from his passion about solving matters ethically and effectively, without mass carnage, and _his_ facts are justified. The other boy, not so much.

"You can't possibly believe that there is no room for negotiation before we launch ourselves into destruction," the anti-war guy claims, one hand placed on his hip and the other suspended and poised towards his opponent, which really showcases his exasperation.

The anti-war guy's argument about having room for negotiation before clumsily throwing oneself into destruction should be a common truth, yet his opponent continues to baffle me with his imbecility as he persists. "War leaves an impression. If we destroy our enemy, they'll know not to mess with us again."

"If we destroy our enemy, there will be no one left to do anything at all!" The man is so frustrated that he forces himself to look away for a moment, but it only lasts for the brief period of time when his opponent isn't dripping bullshit out of his mouth. It doesn't take much time for that to happen.

"Isn't that the goal?"

The anti-war guy's previous pose returns. He shifts his head back to the pro-war fool ever so slowly. You can tell that this recent comment has rendered him beyond furious. "So you don't even want other countries to help your own?"

"If we tear them down, we can take whatever we want from them."

"What you're taking by doing that is actually thousands of innocent lives! These people could've been wonderful scientists, artists, or at least have had their lives to themselves, not ripped away from them by decisions they have no say in from men who think they know best, from men who think no opposing country means no problem so the only resolution is to decimate them." A curtain of rose is pulled across the man's usually perfect face, matching the sunset. His voice can be heard all throughout Saint Petersburg, or so it seems. He cares a lot about this topic. I wonder what made him this way.

"And what happens if that country is taken over and the ideals are changed?"

The man considers sustaining the debate, as he is obviously very upset about the obtuseness that he is being forced to hear, but he is so aware of his opponent's obtuseness that he realizes that there's no way to negotiate _this_ time, and that there's no use fighting what cannot be changed. He calms himself. "My point is that all of this can be circumvented by discussing what is amiss, then fixing it in a civilized manner."

The pro-war guy starts to fire back with something equally as stupid as what he's been spewing (possibly even stupider), but I cut him off, finally speaking up. "You're really just contradicting yourself. You're digging a deeper hole by the second."

The boy's eye contact swings from his opponent to me like a the booms of a sailboat flying over to change direction. Offended is the only way I can describe his facial expression, but I want it to be known that there is a whole plethora of emotions nestled into the aforementioned. His mouth forms an unspoken word before changing to, "You know what, who asked you?"

"No one, but I don't recall an invitation for _your_ opinion, so I assume I can offer mine as well."

I glance over to the anti-war guy, the handsome and mysterious stranger who now invites the most discreet of smirks to his lips. He's on my team, just as I was on his.

"Whatever. I'm gonna go get some food that my family actually paid for, something I'm sure you're not familiar with" -- I see the stranger move the slightest bit, as if he was about to attack the boy but remembered his promise to himself to calm down before he could go anywhere -- "and you can tell your shady friend Anatole that I know what he did and he can go to hell."

I assume he's referring to one of Anatole's many antics against the people he finds annoying, but I have no chance to inquire as to what it was this time, as the whiny boy stomps away from us, leaving me and the stranger alone together in the chilly air of the evening.

"Do you know this boy?" he asks me as he approaches. He watches me while I respond, and he appears genuinely interested by what I have to say. His gaze is intent, yet his eyes are soft, a very pleasant stare. He must be a good listener.

"Now I do, but apparently he knew me and my friend before this brawl."

He nods, then veers down another path of the most essential questions. "What's your name?"

"Alexei. Kozlov. Alexei Kozlov, that is."

"I'm Olivier. Renaud. Olivier Renaud." He laughs warmly, and when he does so, his magnificent cerulean eyes are joined by crows pressing the imprint of their feet into the surrounding skin. "By the way, I know we just met, but I think I like you, Alexei Kozlov, even though you look a bit shabby."

I raise my eyebrow.

"No offense, of course. It's just..." He surveys me up and down, and his face twists into dissatisfaction. "You could use a bath."

"And where would I find one, Olivier Renaud?"

"You could come back to my place, if you want. I just don't want you to freeze out here. I'm finding the Russian weather to be as cold as my dear mother's heart. And what that boy said about not having food to eat...I'm just a bit worried, is all." Olivier's countenance is one of genuine concern, which I appreciate, but I cannot accept his offer. I just met him, as he said himself. My life is hard enough even without trusting strangers, no matter how enchanting I find them.

"Well you don't need to worry about a street urchin like me."

I don't need to be given handouts by people like him. If he's a Frenchman in Russia, chances are he's noble. No one comes to Russia for the living conditions it endows to the middle class. In addition, his clothes are far too nice for any commoner. I would say his entire air smells like rich boy, but his expensive cologne already does the job perfectly well. Anyone can see that he's very wealthy, and I do not exist to serve as charity from people like him.

My aim is to walk away, but my aim is thwarted by Olivier's arm lightly restraining me from movement.

"Alexei, please. It's the least I can do, and to be frank, I am in dire need of friends in Russia." Well now he's just pleading, and I just can't refuse something like that -- I still won't refuse retaining a few suspicions, though.

"Aren't you worried that I'll come and steal your stuff or murder your dog?"

"I don't have a dog, and one effect of bathing you and feeding you is that you'll feel no need to steal, because all that you require will have been given to you already." Olivier's eyes search me hopefully, scanning for either an approval or a rejection, and just the light spilling from his visage makes me a bit more lenient.

"Are you really adamant about this?"

"You know how strong my opinions are," he assures me with a simper reminding me of the situation that occurred a few minutes in the past.

A slender strip of joy spreads across my face. "Then let's go."

Olivier exhales in relief and matches my smile, finally welcomed after lengthy advocacy. "Magnificent."

~~~~~

**A/N: hey I'm Dakota, thanks for reading, hope you continue reading ;)))**

**there are gonna be a lot of pictures/gifs of my Olivier faceclaim just because he's hot as hell lmao**

**btw I am a comment hoe and if u leave a comment I will love you forever**

**if u want to see some sick memes or talk to me, u can hit me up on instagram @colddeadrats**

**here's the spotify playlist I made for the story:** https://open.spotify.com/user/nostrilartist/playlist/79JOby5uGenix70EokcBl4

**~Dakota**


	2. anatole's communism kink

I awake in a chamber of light. The sun tumbles in from the windows, and not even the curtain can stop the early morning dances of May. Rays bounce off of the gold decorations that line Olivier's bedroom, off of the mirrors and the other metals found here. Everything is truly bright, and I want to stay in here forever, but I know that I can't, because this was a one time thing from a rare stroke of luck. This doesn't mean anything except for a night without hunger and dirt. I can't expect anything more from rich people. If they made steps to help people, they wouldn't be rich anymore -- but it's still nice to enjoy what I've been given at the moment.

The clean sheets remind me of how much I've improved my appearance since yesterday evening. I shed no dirt during the night. My hair isn't as raggedy as it has been for a while. I feel completely refreshed thanks to Olivier's kind deed.

Speaking of Olivier, I find that he is still asleep, turned on his stomach with his head towards my side of the bed, his shoulders and neck exposed from the lack of covers there. His golden curls fall over his forehead, while the hair stemming from his eyelids sleeps undisturbed along with him. Olivier himself is a portion of the immense pool of light surrounding me.

Although this scene is very nice and I would like to remain in it, I don't know how to proceed. I'm sure it would be something about meeting his parents at breakfast, and I'm not ready for that at all. I've been living on the streets for a few years now, and I don't speak French, so the entire circumstance would be disastrous. It's better to just leave now without a spoken word or a familial interaction.

Deciding that Olivier is too beautiful in this way to be woken and told about my plan, I carefully slip out of bed and search for something to write with and something to write on so that I can write a letter to him explaining why I must now depart, especially so early in the morning. After maybe half a minute of searching, I stumble upon both of my desired items, and I pen the letter.

_Dear Olivier,_

_I thank you very much for welcoming me into your home for the night, giving me a place to sleep, feeding me, and finding a solution to your remark about my being dirty and in need of a bath. I am very grateful to you, but I am afraid that I must leave or else be discovered by your parents, and I don't want to land you in a sticky situation when all you wanted to do was help me. I hope you find pleasure in knowing that your amicable feelings are reciprocated, and if you want to meet with me again, you know where to find me._

_Your first Russian friend,_

_Alexei_

I leave the letter in my vacant space on the bed for him to find when he wakes up, and I sneak out of the house. It's early enough to achieve, and within several minutes I find myself back on the streets of Saint Petersburg. Several minutes after that, I find myself sitting myself next to Anatole and feeling quite amused by his gaping stare.

"What the hell did you do?" he cries. "You look so...so..." He can't even finish his sentence because of how shocked he is by the change.

"Hot?" I offer. I receive a smack to the head for that comment, but I think it holds a little bit of verity that Anatole doesn't want to admit.

"No, but if you spoke French instead of Russian, I might think you were a noble."

"Well I happened to meet a French-speaking noble who made this adjustment to my appearance last night."

Anatole's expression collapses from one of amazement and wonder to one of disappointment in me. "Alexei, please tell me you're joking."

"You know I don't lie to you."

Instantly Anatole is taken to anger. Years of accumulated hatred towards rich people comes flying out towards me, and it must really fucking hurt for him, because he now has to yell at his best friend -- not at the problem itself this time, but at an enabler who isn't someone he ever thought would be an enabler. In some way, I feel bad for him, even though he's on the opposite side of opinions currently.

"Alexei, you know how I feel about those damn aristocrats!" His tone makes me retract into myself, makes me ashamed of myself and what I've done, and what I've done is something I thought would be beneficial to me and something that I enjoyed while it lasted. Now it feels like nothing.

"Yes, I know very well how you feel, considering you always throw a fit whenever you see one of them, but I can assure you that this guy that I met doesn't fit the archetype that you have in your head."

Before yesterday evening, I would be completely in agreement with Anatole on his stance. I would help him shout it from the rooftops that capitalism is unethical and that wealthy people perpetuate the suffering of those below them financially. I have struggled for my entire life because of this system, and I know perfectly well how it works. Hearing nobles chatter in their upper class language imported from France filled me with ineffable rage. But that was before I met someone whose views contradicted what I knew about rich people.

"And how can you be certain that he's not like the rest of the bourgeoisie scum, as those French-speaking Russian traitors would say?" Anatole's brow arches accusingly.

"I can't, but what he's already done counters what you think all rich people are like. I understand that the majority of rich people that I've encountered are absolute shit, but why can't you accept the possibility that there will always be some outliers? This guy is one of those outliers."

Not even responding to the undeniably sound point I just made, Anatole throws into the mix a comment revealing how disenchanted he is with my recent epiphany. "I thought you moved beyond your days of naivety. Apparently I was wrong."

"Anatole, you're not listening to me! This man took me in for a night, fed me, cleaned me up, gave me the best night's sleep I've had in a long time. After all of that, so what if he's rich?"

Finished with me and my offensive ideas, Anatole rises to his feet and prepares to leave me in favor of another task. "Fine. Whatever. I'll let you doom yourself if that's what you want for your life. Listen, I gotta go deal with that boneheaded fool, the one I always tell you is trouble -- long story short, he's pissy again -- but if that spoiled rich kid comes back, don't you dare talk to him." Anatole turns to leave but concludes that I need another warning. He points his finger at me to drive it in. "And I'm serious about that."

I roll my eyes. "Whatever you say, Anatole."

Anatole parts to take care of business, and I spend the following minutes ranting about him in my head. At first I think there's no way that his ideology could ever poison my pleasant disposition towards Olivier, but when I see my new friend walking down the street in search of me with a loaf of bread swaddled in cloth to give in another act of generosity, my feet don't scramble towards him, rather towards a hiding spot.

Olivier's demeanor is forever so buoyant, and it glimmers from him as he nears where I told him I would be but diminishes when he realizes that I'm not there. I hate to do this to him. I hate to be the reason why the sun gives way to the dark night within him. But I am all too fearing of losing Anatole over this. So I allow him to look deeper into the alley and return with nothing. I allow him to place the bread down in case I locate it later. I allow him to take another look into the alley just to make sure, and I allow him to depart with melancholy cradled in his arms instead of bread.

I'm so moronic to have hid from a person who only wants to be my friend and to help out -- or, if we're thinking about it on a basic human instinct level, a person with food to give me -- but Anatole's words got to me, though I thought they never would.

I suppose it's because Anatole has always been there for me in my time of need, and vice versa. We've stuck together throughout the years, have never lied to each other, never ratted each other out to people who could land us in trouble, never questioned our connection. We've always worked together smoothly. We share the same opinions about the topics that matter and the topics that don't. As much as I want to trust Olivier, my inclination is to consult what Anatole thinks first.

I let him go, and with him goes many opportunities that I could've taken. He walks back to his cave of wealth, and I stay bitter in my solitude.

~~~~~

**A/N: lowkey I like Anatole but highkey he can suck my ass through a straw**

**i hate that Olivier is sad??? literally fucking kill me ???**

**~Dickota**


	3. 2 emo boys cry in a graveyard

Did I ruin a budding friendship just by hiding? The chance is half and half from the scanty evidence I've collected, most of which is just simple logic. For the part that argues that he's gone forever, the evidence is that he assumed I wouldn't want to see him anymore, despite what I said in the note, for whatever reason. I'll leave it to Olivier to decide. For the part that argues that he will be coming back at some point, the evidence is that he used common sense and realized that I was gone for a moment and the moment happened to be when Olivier delivered the bread to where he thought I would be but wasn't. Although the second approach is more logical and what I want to believe, I still feel wary calling the odds anything other than an equal probability.

The thing is, Anatole's words drive deeper and deeper into me, and I'm not even sure that I want to see Olivier again. I'm too distrusting, both of new people and new ideas, especially if my old ideas were the complete opposite of the new. But I can't be so prudent, can't be so scared of change and fresh opportunities to do something with my life, maybe even something important.

I settle on this: if I run into him, that's fine, but I'm not going to go out of my way just to see him. Anatole would be upset, I would feel guilty, and I wouldn't be able to blame it on how small the world is. From my current position in the graveyard, I probably won't be located, despite the fact that I'm not very deep in the property and can be seen from the street. It's far enough from my normal dwelling area that Olivier will miss me here -- that is assuming, however, that he is only out on the street to see me; I don't know his schedule.

For the time being, I'm safe to mourn the people I miss every day and can never forget. It's quiet in this cemetery. Somehow the bustle of the streets doesn't carry to this sacred place. The only noise is the rustling of trees when there's wind and the sobbing of relatives whose love is printed on all these tombstones that surround me. The grieving have a way of maintaining the right amount of silence. I have no distractions. I can cry in peace and continue to remind myself that my baby sister is dead because of my own selfishness.

I've been lugging this burden around for a few years now, yet it has not lessened with each day like the burdens of some other people. Perhaps I'm still so fixated on it because of my frequent visits to the cemetery, but it's not like I want to forget what I've done, even if it _is_ so painful to remember. I can't make the same mistake twice. Neglecting an error increases the chance of it happening again, and I've had enough misery from just one.

"Alexei!" I hear, a somewhat distant voice from the street, loud enough to crack the barrier between the living and the dead in the cemetery and loud enough to jolt me from my solemnity.

I turn to find a smiling Olivier waving at me enthusiastically from behind the cemetery gate while advancing onto the grounds to talk to me.

I don't know how he stumbled across me, considering my regular hiding spot is a bit far from here. Concluding that he was looking for me, I find myself dreading the point when he reaches me, but I remind myself of my plan of accepting him when I see him by chance, so I just let him proceed all the way until he sits down next to me.

"I got your note, but I didn't expect the 'you know where to find me' portion to be referencing the graveyard, but I found you nevertheless. I left some bread where I first saw you because I didn't know if you were just busy at the moment, so I hope it doesn't get stolen."

"Yeah, about that..." I attach my eyes to the ground to avoid looking at Olivier, and I fiddle with my hands as I speak. "My friend Anatole -- you might have heard his name dropped when you were debating that kid yesterday -- has really strong opinions about rich people, and let's just say he doesn't like them very much."

Olivier shrugs. "Neither do I, to be honest. They're all so fake and care too much about trivial matters. You're lucky you don't have to be around them all the time. If I hear one more word about politics from them, I think I'm gonna go mad."

That's something I've also heard about rich people. The aristocrats aren't just screwing the poorer people to a life of suffering or sending people to war with their hot headed decisions born from the power they can puppet around. The aristocrats are apparently annoying, too!

"So this morning Anatole was wondering why I looked so nice when I got back, and I had to tell him, because there's no other possible explanation. Then he started ranting about how all rich people are evil and that I should stay away from you."

"And you listened to him?"

I finally meet Olivier's eyes. "Yeah, because he's my best friend. He's always been there for me, while I met _you_ just yesterday. I'm sorry to say it, but I have more history with Anatole, and I don't want him to leave me because of this."

"That's a tough situation, my friend. But I thoroughly believe that following your heart will bring you the best results, and if it means losing Anatole for something better, so be it. Follow your heart, Alexei. We can continue to be friends, or you can tell me to get lost and never return, and I'll leave with no words of protest." Olivier is awaiting my immediate response, but he isn't aware that it's more complicated than that. However, his original advice is to follow my heart, and my heart beats faster when I'm with Olivier than with Anatole, and my heart reaches out to someone I don't know but would like to know better. It's him. Olivier Renaud.

In my pensiveness, I neglected the passing of time, and I now realize that it's been far longer than I anticipated. Olivier sits with his chin resting on his knee, bored from the silence and still attending my answer.

"You."

Olivier's chin detaches from his knee, and a sheet of surprise falls over his face. "Well I'm glad to hear that." Satisfied with my explanation, Olivier dyes the conversation a different hue. "Never mind Anatole. What brings you here?"

"My sister's grave is right here in front of us."

Apparently he hadn't been expecting that, and is quite shocked to find that, indeed, my sister's grave stands before him.

"After my parents died, it was just me and my six year-old sister left. It was my job to take care of her, and I always fulfilled the duty, because I loved her with my whole heart. She was sick and starving, and one day I stole bread for myself and none for her, and she died. She just fucking died, and now I have to live with it, so I'm sorry if you find me in the cemetery far too often, because I need a way to repent for my crime."

Gravity darkens the man I think of as full of light. Death changes everyone's mood, I suppose, to any of our abundant emotions. He does not speak, only studies every indent and color change in the tombstone. It's a way to keep him connected with the unfortunate circumstance of my sister's death but also occupy him to escape having to talk. Not only does he hate death -- he is afraid of it. He is afraid of discussing it. He is afraid of how those who are two degrees of separation from death will react. He is afraid of eventually meeting it himself. And really who can blame him?

"Do you have any idea what it's like to have someone else's blood on your hands?" I ask him.

"I can't imagine, no."

"Then you're lucky."

"But it wasn't your fault, really," Olivier claims, tearing himself from his study to look me in my now tear-stained eyes.

Now that he's focused on me, I find it fitting to wipe away my tears. I can't cry in front of him yet. "And how do you know that?"

I find this to be a preposterous claim, and frankly I'm beyond offended. He can't just come in here and completely alter my way of thinking. At least not again. He has no right. I came here to silently do what I need to do, and he waltzed right in and started digging through my life to answer his burning questions. Just because he's always gotten everything that he's ever wanted doesn't mean that I'm playing by his rules, too.

"Yes, you stole the bread, but it's not like you stole bread _from_ your sister. And you said she was sick, too! Disease is a rampant murderer, as I'm sure you know."

"Can we just...stop?"

I'm tired of fighting about what I've been telling myself for years. I'm in distress, and Olivier can recognize that. He stops as well.

Still a bit disoriented, Olivier rises to his feet. He lingers for the briefest of moments, fidgeting with his hat and debating whether or not he should voice his apology, but he decides against it in favor of a quick, "I should go."

And just like that, I'm alone again.

~~~~~

**A/N: gotdam why can't they just be friends**

**(because I have an outline)**

**~Dankota**


	4. pique-nique

Curiosity takes ahold of him, always pumping out more and more questions that will never escape from the mind to reality in exactly the same way that we want them to. What if I stole this bread? What if I had a few more pounds on my body? What if I didn't have to see every notch in my ribs? His answer lies in a loaf of bread that isn't his, a slice of meat from an animal he hasn't ever seen in his secluded Saint Petersburg life, a taste of heaven that he's only heard about from the nobles passing through the street.

I have only known Alexei Kozlov for a few conscious hours in total, yet I trust him enough to call him a friend and allow him to sleep at my house. However, I don't trust him not to steal this bread from the tiny market stand. He's done it before, but he hasn't dismantled the habit after the unfortunate situation that was his sister's death. He knows that it won't happen again, because the damage is already done. There are no more sisters to starve. He continues to steal bread.

His eye is trained precisely on his victim. He has no capacity to see me, for I am not what he seeks. If he can fill the howling pain settled deep in his body, and if he can do it for free, albeit illegally, he has to be careful. Alexei is hollow, yet there is still no space for mistakes. He watches, waits, selects his prize and his plan of attack. But I can't let him do it.

I, the good little rich boy Olivier Renaud, born to a wealthy family in Paris, have never starved. I cannot possibly pretend to understand what Alexei is going through each time he steals. However, I do know something. If he had money, I know he would use it to buy these products, but he does not. I trust his heart, but I do not trust his human instinct to follow it. And since I am fortunate enough to possess a large sum of wealth, it is my duty to share with those whom I made one dollar poorer for each time I became one dollar richer.

"Alexei," I call out to him.

His concentration snaps, and his curiosity shifts towards the expression he casts towards me. I've broken his current ambition, as I intend to fulfill it in a legal manner. Alexei's expression can only be painted as scandalized and taken off guard, and I'm sure he's also tired of seeing me around everywhere, especially now that I've foiled his plans.

"Olivier, what are you doing here? Don't you have a surplus of food at home? I doubt you need to be in this market buying it."

"Or stealing it, as you were on the brink of doing."

Alexei scowls, but he knows nonetheless that it's true. Yet he deflects me as always. "You don't know my life, Olivier."

"You're right. I don't. But at least let me buy some food for you."

"I don't want to live off of your handouts," he mutters, rotating slightly farther away from me to pretend like he's still shopping for his future victims when in reality he just doesn't want to confront me head on.

"Then don't think of them as handouts. Think of them as a gift from a friend." I smile, but it does not sway Alexei -- I'm discovering that he's more stubborn than I first thought. I place a caring hand on his shoulder but find an unwelcoming flinch. "Look, if it makes you feel any better, I can buy this food and invite you to a picnic as friends immediately after."

"Calling a thing something else doesn't make it a different thing."

"But alas, I'm already assembling my picnic!" I shrug with a smile, thinly feigning innocence as I grab some fruits.

Alexei crosses his arms defiantly, but I catch a poorly hidden smile emerging. It's cute to see him try to conceal it.

After a long battle of trying to convince Alexei to come along for a nice picnic with me, we now promenade through the streets of our minds, telling each other stories and sharing details about ourselves that had never made it to the light before. I've unearthed parts of Alexei's personality that I had never considered before -- for example, I've found that Alexei is sophisticated despite having dropped out of school early, in possession of many jokes and abundant humor, and considerate of human lives that he's never even encountered before. He knows the human psyche, and he knows his own better, and because of this, he is understanding. He understands both himself and me, which makes it simple to talk to him. Despite this simplicity, he is incredibly intelligent. His knowledge stretches far beyond his years, far beyond what even some college thinkers can manage. He seems as though he is heavily burdened yet is still freer than I could ever be.

I like him more with each word that he says to me. I like the kind of emotion he installs in me. He makes my heart flutter, and I don't even know why, but I like that, too. I don't understand what happens inside me when I see him, but I think it's a good feeling. His eyes hold so many secrets that I want to be a part of, secrets that I have to uncover. I think I would profit from seeing him more often.

I take a grape from the cluster that I bought at the market, chewing it into a swallowable mush before I share some news. "There's a ball tonight with a bunch of French aristocrats, and you're my only friend who knows my opinion on them."

"I think I'm your only friend at all, actually."

"You're terrible." I lightly punch his arm and roll my eyes. "Anyway, I can't survive this ball alone, and I was wondering if you would like to come along with me."

This sounds like a very dangerous proposal for Alexei. His raggedy self would be an eyesore in a chamber of elegance and wealth. He would be the center of attention, and not for a respectable reason. This isn't a place for him. But I want to invite him anyway. I'll protect him.

A gasp. "Sounds great to be surrounded by a bunch of annoying rich people, my favorite group of people on Earth!" he exclaims, faking enthusiasm poorly enough to be recognized as a joke. "Only one small problem: I don't speak French."

"God, I wish I didn't either. Then I wouldn't have to listen to their incessant chatter."

Every ball is the same. I can't even distinguish them anymore. They pass and pass and pass out of my memory by the time I return home. They're so monotonous and boring, and within each second I feel a full century turn into another. Each moment is punctuated by sharp laughing caused by an unfunny comment. It goes on like this for the entire night and into the early morning. The attendees believe that they're amusing themselves well, but in reality it's all fake.

I need a reprieve from that. I need a person who has never experienced this type of life and is therefore not subjected to its effects. I need a refreshing person. I need someone who can distract me from the haughty life of royals. I need Alexei.

"But seriously -- if I'm going along with you, I need to be able to communicate. I won't be able to survive a night where the only language being spoken is a language that I can't understand. Why bring me to a ball if I can't communicate with the people I'll meet there? This sounds like a disastrous idea if I'm left alone with a girl on the dance floor. I don't know how to dance, but I can't even tell her that because I don't speak her language."

I imagine Alexei being completely lost on the dancefloor, and I feel a bit bad for laughing, but it's not such an implausible idea. He has reason in being worried about this. I guess I'll just keep him away from dancing. I doubt any French aristocrats would like to mingle with a Russian street urchin who can't even talk to them. Yes, he's handsome, but it's likely that rich people can smell outsiders and will be repelled nonetheless.

"Fine, fine, I'll translate for you. And just a heads up -- my sister is coming from France today and will be at the ball, and she's always so interested in my life, so she'll definitely want to meet you. My parents probably will, too."

Alexei shakes his head frantically, his panic rising more and more with each detail I tell him. "Hell no. I can deal with your sister but not your parents. They'd judge me too hard."

"If they judge you, I'll tell them off by confessing how lovely you are."

Alexei huffs out a labored sigh, which I know means a surrender. "Okay, fine. I know people judging me is inevitable, but I'll go with you anyway. You're giving me those puppy dog eyes, and I bet you aren't even aware of it."

I seize his hand excitedly, picking him up from the ground and beginning to collect the remnants of our picnic. "Well let's get ready then!"

He rolls his eyes as I drag him away, although it's shipped with a small smile. "You're evil."


	5. shut the hell ur mouth

[Waltz Music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaxTRX9oAV4)

I took Alexei back to my house to fix him up and make him look like one of the nobles that we both hate. He said something pretentious about life eventually making you the things you despise, for which I offered nothing more than a disbelieving laugh. I did my best to adorn him with the current fashion so that he will not cause as much of a scene. But he is nervous nevertheless. Anyone can see that. He knows his standing in society, and he knows that it is far from mine and from that of the guests at the party. He's the outsider tonight. Everyone's eyes will be on him.

After a few minutes of trying to calm him down, we arrive where the ball is being held, and I'm fairly certain from his gaping expression and wide eyes that it's the grandest place that Alexei has ever seen in his life. Arches form the bones of the magnificent building, and an intricate fountain out front casts a cool mist onto guests ascending the path leading towards the main entrance.

Immediately as we step into the main ballroom area, we are greeted by my enthusiastic sister who must have been waiting for me to arrive. She flings herself into my arms, trusting me to catch her and suspend her in the air, which I fulfill. Her genuine smile and her bubbly laugh remind me that, while the rest of the population in this ballroom is false, my sister will always be here with her untainted personality.

Performing the standard greeting of two swift kisses to the cheek, she exclaims, "Salut, dear brother! I'm finally in Russia to join you and the family!"

Lourdes had stayed back in France to complete her studies before coming with the rest of the family to Saint Petersburg. Unlike me, she values education above all, therefore she did not want to miss a moment of her schooling. She assures me that women must be well educated, especially in a world where they are not typically so. Because of this idea, we left her in Paris in the beginning of May, and she now joins us at the end.

"Oh how I've missed you," I express as I lower her to the floor again, but I hold contact between our eyes sparkling with conviviality. And then I hear a prompting cough from behind me and remember to tell her about Alexei. "I have a friend that I would like you too meet." I bring him around from behind me, and instantly I can decipher from Lourdes' expression that she's enticed by him. "This is Alexei Kozlov."

A thinly shaped brow curves itself into a new shape on her forehead. "Russe?"

I nod.

She surveys Alexei up and down again, beyond satisfied. "Il est beau, lui."

"What's she saying?" Alexei whispers, fearing that he's just been insulted in a language that he doesn't understand.

"She thinks you're handsome," I assure him, and his cheeks match the artificial rouge of the women surrounding him. It's been less than a minute, and my sister already has a crush on Alexei. Well, he _is_ charming, so I can't be _that_ shocked.

"Ah, here come Maman and Papa." Lourdes points to my approaching parents, and I can only assume that their goal is to briefly meet with me before turning all their attention to the stranger I've brought from the streets of Russia, not France. My stomach turns sour, and it's likely to guess that Alexei's does the same.

"Olivier, I see that you've reunited with your sister," my father says, pretending to be captured by me but still maintaining a close eye on Alexei -- my guest shifts uncomfortably under his gaze. "But I have to ask, who is this boy with you? I've never seen him at any of the other balls before."

"This is Alexei Kozlov," Lourdes explains, beaming.

Though they are visibly repulsed by my bringing a Russian from the middle class to the ball, they cannot risk making a scene. Any error around rich people becomes the new hot gossip among them, and just like that, you're at the bottom. They're not going to try to reprimand me right now, and I'm somehow grateful for that. It spares Alexei that way. Even if he doesn't know what they're saying, he can read their body language. I'd hate to bring him to a ball that he wasn't all excited about going to, just to have him slandered and embarrassed by people he's trying to learn to not detest.

"You know, Olivier, why don't you talk to Julie? I saw her here somewhere, and she really, really likes you," my mom suggests, winking, but I could not be less interested in that girl.

For a year now, my parents have been suggesting that I become closer with the daughter of one of their fellow noble friends. They claim that she's as nice as can be, incomparably polite, one of the most beautiful women that they know (which I'm not denying, but it just isn't a factor to make me interested in her, and that's probably because I don't find women very appealing. I prefer fascinating people like Alexei instead). To be completely straight about it, I want nothing to do with her. She's terribly bland yet active enough to be annoying, and she sticks to me like the world's most effective adhesive. She conforms to the type of aristocrat for whom animosity stirs in my stomach. I could never be anything more than fake acquaintances with her for the sake of the public eye. My own eyes aren't on Julie. They never will be.

However, my mother wants me to do this, and I am familiar with the dangers of making a scene in this sort of setting, so it's out of my hands. I have no choice but to make the right amount of conversation required to seem polite and inadvertently have her think that I'm flirting. She didn't say anything about not taking Alexei along, though. He'll be with me if things get messy, then we can slip out of the tension and enjoy ourselves. Because I invited him here. Tonight is about us.

Lourdes is conscious of my hatred for Julie, and in an instant she returns to the circle with a drink to help soothe me before I launch myself into the pits of hell. When I'm finished. I scan the room for my dreaded target, hand my glass back to Lourdes, light a cigarette, take Alexei's arm, and commence my path towards the devil.

Julie is absolutely delighted to see me. She kisses both my cheeks a bit too fervidly and giggles endlessly when she's done. I don't know why she's so excited to see me, considering I make it very clear that I don't like her by never reciprocating her flirtatious words and actions. Maybe she wants something from me. Maybe her parents are playing the same game as mine, but that's unlikely, judging from how avidly she portrays the role.

Then she notices Alexei, and her entire facade collapses instantly and is replaced with one of disgust. By some means, she is able to, just like my parents, detect that he isn't from the same social standing as her and is therefore inferior in her viewpoint.

"Olivier, would you like to dance?" Julie asks, still keeping an intent guard on Alexei.

No, I really wouldn't, because I fucking hate this girl, but I'm obligated to accept. Like I said, I can't make a scene or let my parents know that I caused drama with his close friend's daughter, as that could be the end of our friendship, and I would be in serious trouble. In addition -- besides the fact that she's completely in love with me and would want to dance with me anyway -- I comprehend that she's pulling me away from Alexei just so she can slander him out of earshot. But I also don't want to leave Alexei alone in the area of those without a dance partner, where he could be confronted or insulted. To fix this, I turn around to create contact with Lourdes by beckoning her forward and pointing to Alexei. It appears that she understands, as she advances, and by the time Julie and I are on the dancefloor, her arm is laced tightly with Alexei's.

Julie tosses another suspicious look back at Alexei. "He doesn't speak French, does he?" When I respond no, she elaborates as to why she inquired, saying, "Okay, good, because I want to ask you why on earth you brought him here without him hearing."

I accuse her with the tilt of my brow. "Do you have a problem with him?"

Julie doesn't respond, just fidgets uncomfortably, as if she's a young child upset about not getting their way -- which I suppose isn't so far off from the truth.

"Well to answer your question, I brought him here because he's my friend."

"You know, I don't understand why you feel the need to do what's not healthy for you." She isn't able to meet my eyes. Even she can recognize that what she's saying is hurtful.

"How is having friends unhealthy? If anything, it's one of the healthiest things I can do in my situation. Lourdes keeps telling me that I need to find friends in Saint Petersburg."

"I don't think Lourdes is faring any better than you are, Olivier." Julie laughs, but it's not a laugh derived from humor. It's one frequently used by the same nobles dancing beside me when they gossip together. It's a revolting laugh. "Look at her! She's clinging to that boy like he's her husband."

I hope this appeases my parents, because I am _really_ not having a good time right now. I should've just made a scene and fucked the consequences. I can't bear to be with her for longer than I have to.

"Yeah, you'd know a thing or two about clingy, wouldn't you?" I mutter.

"You're so difficult." She releases a sigh packed with so much frustration that I would think it were genuine if she weren't so fake. "I didn't expect you, _a noble_ , to be hanging around filth like him."

"And I didn't expect _you_ , a beautiful woman capable of winning any man in this room, to be hanging around someone who isn't interested at all."

She gasps dramatically. "Olivier--"

I cut off the beginning of her distressed rant by peeling away from her without a word and making my way back to Alexei. By this point, I don't even care about the drama that will ensue. Leaving a woman on the dancefloor alone is high up on the list of the most embarrassing things to do, but that's not my problem. That's Julie's problem, and a problem that she deserves. My parents' disapproval can wait. I already know how they feel.

Nodding to my sister to signal that her job is done, I lead Alexei out of the room and into the chilly night.  

~~~~~

**A/N: LMAOOOOO GET FUCKED JULIE I AM YELLIGN**

**also I found a face claim for Alexei (Matthew Clavane)**

**~Dak**


	6. thas wild bro

"Do you think your sister has a crush on me?" Alexei wonders as I drag him outside.

It's completely plausible that she has a crush on him just from seeing him for a short period of time, but that's not the topic for which I pulled him outside to discuss. I have something on my mind, and it's been eating at me for several years. Alexei is the person I trust the most besides my sister, but my sister is not the person with the best advice.

I take a seat on the stairs leading up to the house, my head in my hands. "I don't know, but I don't need to know, because I'm stressed out."

"Oh, is that why you left your date on the dance floor and dragged me away?"

"She was insulting you, Alexei," I remind him with a tone that cuts away the joking flavor from Alexei's voice.

"Really?" He cocks his head, then shrugs after having a silent realization. "I'm not surprised actually, but what did she say?"

"She said I shouldn't be hanging around you, and I told her that I'm not interested in her at all anyway."

"You did not!" Alexei is bursting from one part disbelief and one part joy.

I perform the kind of shrug that pretends to be innocent but is, in reality, clearly indicative of my intentions with Julie. "Alas, I did."

"Olivier Renaud, you absolute _animal_." He's laughing as if I told him a joke, and the cognizance that I made him laugh invites a strangely pleasant feeling into my body, but it soon dies as I begin my depressing spiel.

"So...this is going to sound so fucking ignorant coming from me, but all I ask is that you listen."

Muscles in Alexei's face form valleys of concern in between his dark brows, and he finds a spot next to me to be on my level as we talk. "Yeah, of course."

I inhale some courage as I search for my words, and they're soon ready to utter. "I just...I really hate this life that I have to live."

I haven't even gotten to the main point before Alexei cuts me off, going back on his promise. "Okay, I know I said that I would listen, but I have to stop you right there. How can you hate your life if you have everything that you want in it? Yeah, you have to deal with nobles a lot more than I do, but you have the same privileges that they retain, so I feel like it's pretty easy to overlook their annoyingness. You're not living on the streets and having to steal bread just to survive for one more day. I just have a hard time believing that anyone could be justifiably uncontent with the kind of life you have."

Another wave of stress hits me, this one grander than before. Now I have two matters to deal with all at once, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to fix either of them.

"I knew it would sound like that, but it's not completely straightforward like you make it sound," I clarify.

"Then please explain it to me, Olivier."

Alexei's voice reaches a point of irritation. I must seem like the kind of rich person he always feared I would be, _I_ always feared I would be. I don't want to let him down like this.

"You have never had the pressure to fit a certain mold created by people who all follow it themselves. But for me, it's been drilled into my head since birth. I don't trust anyone except for you, because my family is a fucking trap of people who have been shoved into that tight box. It's emotionally destructive to live in a family like that, and all I want to do is escape from it."

Now I believe that he understands. His silence fills me in on all I wondered about before. But I don't seek his silence. I seek his advice. I want to know that he'll be there for me and that he can help me resolve my dilemma. I accept that I will probably never be able to discover a resolution, but all I need is someone to listen.

"God, this is all so twisted," I decide, directing the anger of the conversation from Alexei's heart to my own. "I should be grateful for all the wonderful privileges I have. What the hell is wrong with me?"

"There's nothing wrong with you, Olivier Renaud," Alexei counters instantaneously, almost on instinct. He places a reassuring hand on my knee, pressing down gently, and grasps my eyes with his. "You're something special, something different from the rest of the world, because at least you have the strength to try and resolve your perceived flaws. Most people I've met are just complacent with their identity."

"You're too smart for your own good, you know that?"

A smirk. "You flatter me." He then cuts to the chase. The topic at hand calls for a solution. "For real, though -- why be civilized in your leisure? With me you have no obligations. You can be yourself. You can do whatever the hell you want. Just let me show you the untamed world."

"It's not exactly easy for me to run wild if my reputation is the only thing that defines me."

"You should really listen to the other Olivier I know, the one who says nobles are all annoying and that he'd love to get away from them. Listen to him. Why do you need to be well received by people you despise?"

With the speed of a flash of lightning and the force of an ox, Alexei grabs my hand and pulls me from my seat on the stairs, running with me on his leash for as long as it takes for me to follow out of my own accord, at which point he drops my hand and continues to run through the Saint Petersburg streets, hollering just for the sake of making noise.

He obviously has no fear of landing himself in trouble because of this, whereas I do. I must have collected his portion of fear, and that's why he has none and why I have so much. I don't want to be discovered by people who know me or my family and ruin my reputation that way. Even though Alexei told me to fuck my reputation, it's more difficult than he can ever know to dismantle what I've been taught since birth. I find myself worrying after I told Alexei I wouldn't.

"Alexei, you're out of control," I warn him, but it's evident that he doesn't care at all. He never does. He's not like me.

He turns to me, his smile as wide as his ambition, with an overly joyous tone caressing his throat, and says, "Isn't that how life is best lived, just waiting to see where things take you?"

I want to tell him that reckless behavior ends in trouble tantamount to wading in thick tar for as long as the storm is staining the sky, but he seems to be enjoying himself too much for me to not feel guilty for reprimanding him, and he wouldn't listen to me anyway. And maybe I need to live a little, too.

So I promise myself for a moment that there's no possibly way that any nobles could find me because of the fact that they're all grouped together at the ball. That's the excuse I go with, and I can then allow myself to let go completely -- let go of my fear, my social paranoia, any emotion besides exhilaration.

I exhale my first yell into the empty night. And my god, it feels wonderful to be so free. And to think, this is something Alexei experiences without apprehensions! He is truly magnificent, that boy.

"Now you're getting the hang of it!" Alexei calls with a broad smile indicative of how proud he is of me, and it causes me to realize how proud I am of myself, too.

We run through the pale streets zealously, yet we never tire. Our young hearts generate enough energy to sustain us for as long as we are wild and free. We could run until the ball ends and we return to our places to spend the entire night thinking about what just happened with a poorly hidden smile tucked into our lips. But that doesn't concern me now. I have to live in the moment.

Alexei confuses me shortly by slowing his pace a bit and spinning around towards me, but I soon learn to appreciate his decision to do it. He allows me to close the extra distance between us before he takes my face in his hands and adheres his lips to mine.

The initial impact and first few moments are sweet, but Alexei takes no time messing around. His eternal hunger manifests in desires biting away at my skin. We're panting and we're sweaty and we're a mess, but we're together. I wouldn't fully know, but is this what living feels like?

Alexei pulls away for a moment but guards himself very close to me as he catches his breath.

His eyes are alive and dancing. His soul cackles from within.

"Am I the one who grips your bones?" he asks. His gaze pierces straight into my mind, a hungry flame. "I sure hope I've obtained enough valor to hold worth in your judgment, Olivier Renaud."

I love how he says my name, how it's tinted by his Russian accent and doesn't match any of the French voices I despise. I love how his emotions radiate from his entire body. I love how much he values living despite the state in which he lives. I love how he pushes me to think outside the box. I love _him_.

"You make my heart beat so fast, Alexei Kozlov," I confess.

"That's what I like to hear."

Within an instant, he's back on my lips again, and I don't ever want him to let go.

~~~~~

**A/N: YOOOOOOOOO IT FINALLY HAPPENED LMAO**

**I seriously love them so much, they're so sweet omg**

**~Da[n]k**


	7. sweet summer gays

[I'm Yours by Billie Holiday](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJkS5kse9EA)

Alexei and I have known each other for a little over a month now, and each day I fall more and more in love with him, and him with me. Each day, I learn more and more about Alexei, and every fact throws me into amazement. I can't dream of a world without him in it, but I can guess that the sky would forever be a dark and gloomy blanket over the earth if he did not exist. Alexei Kozlov is the light of my life, and if he is gone, then there is no longer any light -- simple as that.

We've stretched a soft blanket underneath us to shield us from the prickly grass as we lie here together. I can't think of anything else that I would love to do more than repose with no obligations with the person I love the most. There's nothing to do except for devote this time to each other in doing whatever we please. The universe relaxes for a moment. All is well. Until a certain question is posed.

"How long is your family staying in Saint Petersburg?" Alexei inquires with a voice as soft as the languidly shifting breeze, a voice that may be attributed to his concern about how long he has left with me before I return to Paris and resume my life, all the while missing him like crazy.

The question hits me like a load of bricks swinging straight into my stomach. I never pondered the subject since I met Alexei and he became a huge part of my life, but it's one of the most important questions he can ask. I don't need another crisis to sort through in my mind. We need to communicate this before I start a countdown and stress about how many days I have left.

All throughout this time that we've spent together in Saint Petersburg, from the instance when we first met to the present, we have not once talked of the future. The closest we've come is talking about resolutions to a future self without actually mentioning the word future. We need to broach the subject while we still have time to do so, or else we could lose all we have built with each other.

My family is only in Saint Petersburg for the summer, and we will return to Paris afterwards. How do Alexei and I proceed after that, since he would presumably stay in Russia? That's what I need to figure out sooner or later. I don't want to leave him, especially not after he's made my life so much more than it used to be. He gives me variety where there would usually be none. He sets my soul on fire.

"We're leaving Russia to return to Paris at the very beginning of October. Our French bodies can't handle when Russia gets even colder. In fact, I'm not even sure that Russians themselves can handle when Russia gets even colder."

Any country on earth would instantly become the stupidest country on earth if they decided to invade Russia in the winter. Their troops would all be dead before the chance to fight arose. They would gain nothing. Though it's not much different from some other war strategies I've heard. War in general is a mess.

"That's fair. Russia's a bitch in the winter. Any decently intelligent person would get out of here when the time comes for winter."

I don't think Alexei understands the gravity of the situation. While I have the privilege of escaping Russia before the winter consumes me, he does not. He has to stay here, like he has done for his entire life, and that is where we part ways, potentially forever. I will have no more friends, no more cheer. My parents won't understand, and Lourdes will try to understand but ultimately fail. I'll revert back to my state of loneliness with the addition of a missing space in my heart, yearning for someone I left many kilometers behind me.

"But I want to stay with you. You don't get to escape Saint Petersburg when my trip is over."

"We have a lot of time before that happens," Alexei assures me, though a small pinch of stress enters his bloodstream because of my own stress. "You don't have to worry about it right now."

"Time passes quickly, though," I counter right back.

"That is, if you don't spend it right."

I loop my fingers through some strands of Alexei's hair, twirling them around slowly and playing absently with them. "Then how do you propose we spend it? In the correct way, of course, but what does that entail?"

"We spend it however we like. No one tells us what to do. We can just make sweet love all day." Alexei wiggles his eyebrows in a jokingly suggestive manner, which earns him a soft nudge from me that gets my point across effectively enough.

"I would very much like to bring you back to Paris with me after my stay in Saint Petersburg."

That would fix the problem. When we leave Russia for France, I don't have to part with Alexei. He can come along and experience a new life in a different country. I can translate for him until he learns the language if he chooses. It would all be perfect. We don't even have to pick a date of return to Saint Petersburg for him, because he could theoretically stay with me forever, or go wherever I go if I don't stay in France.

"And what would your parents think about that?" He's skeptical, naturally, but the plan could work out somehow.

"We both know very well that you don't give a shit about what my parents think."

Alexei has demonstrated time and time again that my parents are the last people on earth that he'd listen to. He has never trusted them, even from the start, but adding in how they treat me puts a bit of animosity into the mixture as well. To him, my parents are just another set of nobles that he's always detested. They should mean nothing in his judgment.

"Well I've never had to live with them!" Alexei asserts, nevertheless with a smile. "To be honest, I'm a bit scared of them, too."

Alexei Kozlov? Scared of people? Now this is unheard of. He is usually so fearless, damning the consequences and never looking back. This must be a first time thing for him. I'm still in disbelief, really.

"I'll need to ask them obviously, but as long as we don't disturb them too much, everything should be fine."

"You're too many parts optimistic -- which is one reason why I love you, don't get me wrong; you're like the literal sun, super hot and super bright -- but you're not enough parts realistic."

Optimism is what pushes me. If everything were realistic in my planning process, I might just fall into the pessimistic side of the scale. I require optimism to keep myself going, which Alexei doesn't. Alexei is realistic but sometimes a bit unrealistically pessimistic. Personally, I believe that my approach to matters turns out better than his.

"You're always the one telling me to take chances. Why not go for it?"

Alexei has taught me how to come out of my shell, and now that I've done it, he tells me to slide back in again. But his mistake is that he's _already_ taught me, so I have his skills now. I'll continue to persist.

"Damn you, Olivier Renaud, using my own logic against me."

I wink. "I guess it's because you're so smart."

"Don't sweet talk me to get what you want," Alexei protests, although with a light smile at the edge of his lips.

"Do you _not_ want to go back to Paris with me, or are you just stubborn? I feel like my parents would be a minor inconvenience when you consider the fact that we could have been separated forever. And I know how much you're obsessed with me."

"You should also know that I'd love to. I just ask a lot of questions."

Instantly my attitude leaps. "Fantastic! I'll ask my parents when I next see them."

Moving closer, Alexei curls himself into me as if a child. "Just stay with me for now, okay?"

I sew a kiss to the top of his head, a tiny promise of love. "That's exactly where I want to be."   **  
**

**~~~~~**

**A/N: i'm anticipating smth but i can't say ;))**

**but at least they're making plans 2gether omg how cute**

**~Dickotass**


	8. bicth ???

"Maman, Papa, I have a dire question in need of an answer." I burst into the drawing room, where my mother and father are relaxing with a cup of tea and a book by the fireplace, which they both abandon upon hearing my voice and the importance of the situation conveyed by it.

If I have the chance to stay with the person I love forever, why should I not be excited and carry a fortified tone? I have a solution to a question that was bugging me before I found it, and this is where I can test if it will work or not. I'm overzealous.

"Ask away," my mother permits, a bit surprised by my sudden enthusiasm yet composed nevertheless.

"Do you remember that boy that I brought to the ball a few weeks ago? The one with the dark brown hair, almost black?"

I hate to ask, because I know exactly how they will react, but it's essential to inquire, because he's the center of my main question, the one that is about to come.

Disgust passes over my mother's face, forever the one to be the most judgemental of people she encounters and decides she doesn't like. "Oh yes."

"I was wondering if we could take him back to France with us when we leave Saint Petersburg."

Disgust turns to conniption and astonishment. "Why on earth would you want to do that? Have you seen him?"

"He's my friend, Maman."

She shakes her head, dismissing my silly notions as she would call them. "Olivier, I really don't think you should be making friends like him."

"And why is that?"

I really should be used to my mother's disapproval for all people that don't conform exactly to her standards, but Alexei is more important than all of them. I will fight for him. I will question my mother with every move she makes. I can't let Alexei slip through my fingers just because she doesn't like him -- and for a superficial reason, too.

"He doesn't even speak French."

That never stopped Alexei before. Even when Julie was insulting him, that was when we were dancing, and he wouldn't have heard her even if she were speaking Russian. And what about my parents? They're living in Russia yet don't speak Russian. Although they aren't chatting with the Russian-speaking commoners and only with the French-speaking Russian nobles, they are still in a country whose primary language they don't speak. It's not like I'm completely shocked -- I deal with their hypocrisy often.

"Then you don't have to listen to him if you don't want to. And I speak Russian, so it doesn't matter if he doesn't know even one word in French."

"I always knew your learning Russian was a bad idea. Now you're irreparably infatuated with this Russian street boy."

"He's more sophisticated than lots of people I've met at any of the balls we attend."

I'm not even lying just to make Alexei seem more likeable to my mother. I have learned so much about various topics from him, stretching from topics only native Russians would know, to topics that a scholar might not even think of. I am confident in saying that I have been mentally enriched by his knowledge.

Picking up her book again, my mother continues reading after making her last snide comment, this time about me. "I highly doubt that. Your judgment has never been very beneficial to any outcome."

Concluding that my mother is going to do nothing but slander Alexei and even her own son, I turn to the other person whose advice I need to collect. "What' _your_ opinion, Papa?"

Having continued reading after noticing that he wasn't involved in first part of the conversation, he answers me from a mouth blocked from behind his book. "I agree with your mother on all of this."

I show signs of giving up on my plan -- straining a heavy sigh from my lungs, clenching my jaw, etc. -- but it appears that my father is not finished.

He shrugs as if dropping the previous subject entirely to instead focus on a new one that isn't so emotionally tolling. "But none of that matters anyway, as you will be returning to France before the summer ends. Quite soon, actually."

I already know where this is going, and I know that it's turning south. I predicted that this would happen sooner or later, but I didn't predict that it would affect me so much before. This is where my entire plan crumbles. This is where my happiness becomes snuffed out by a destiny that I have no say in. This is where I leave Alexei.

"Father..."

"Son, I am sure that you are well aware of my military prowess. A large sum of my reputation comes from it, and I am respected because of it. Now, since you are of age, I figured it's time for you to follow in my footsteps and join the French army."

It seems like the only thing my father cares about is his reputation and the military that created it. He doesn't pay mind to Lourdes and me and his wife. All he does is chat with his army friends at the ball and through letters. The military devours his life. I don't want that to happen to me when there's so much more in life to explore. I resist.

"Why don't I have a choice in this?"

My father puts his book back on the couch forcefully. Now he is absorbed with the conversation. "You'd better watch what you say, Olivier. It almost sounds as if you're disrespecting the foundations of this family."

"Just because I don't want to be your legacy doesn't mean that I can't do something equally as important for the family."

"If you don't consider the military to be the top priority, you're not even a part of the family."

"Maybe I don't want to be."

My mother gasps as if I delivered the most offensive thing in the world to her, which I'm not remorseful for, but my father isn't so easily taken after years of seeing every horror in the world from that beloved military that he adores. He continues to argue instead. He's always been stone cold like this.

"Well you can't show any signs of it. As far as anyone knows, you're my polite and respectful son who will listen to his father's commands. You're joining the military, whether you like it or not."

The polite and respectful son is all I've ever been. Now that I've met Alexei, I think of myself as more than that. He has uncovered my complexities that he claims he's always seen and makes _me_ see them, appreciate them. I don't want to go back to the polite and respectful son. That person was a facade. It only existed a few inches away from my body but appeared real enough to be believable. That is not who I am.

"This is so unfair!" I sound like a child, but if that's what it takes to remind my father that I'm too young to be shipped off to die, so be it.

"Don't you dare say that," my father warns, almost like a threat with the way he poses his finger in the air, rigid. "Do you want to be seen as a coward among our acquaintances?"

I know that would be _his_ biggest fear, but after having an epiphany thanks to Alexei, I do not think of it. He has rendered me stronger than ever. I am not scared of what my reputation holds for me in the eyes of others.

"Frankly, I don't care about your acquaintances."

"You evidently don't care about the essential topics as you should. We're not going to bicker any longer. You're already stuck in this position." He has delivered the verdict, and as he said, I am already stuck.

I let a shadow envelop me. "When am I leaving?" I murmur, eyes to the floor, silently accepting my defeat.

"Tomorrow."

Nodding, I exit to pack my bags and have a little privacy while I weep.

~~~~~

The morning rises above the horizon to signal the day of my departure, the day that I was dreading all night. I received no sleep. I replaced rest with worry, and it's taken a visible toll on me, but there's nothing I can do. Whatever. The hollows under my eyes can stay if they please.

I abandoned certain items that I have no need of in the military, items that only tie me to the same family that tied me to the military. In some ways it feels kind of refreshing to let go of a few burdens, a few reminders of who my family wants me to be. I take my new and improved bag downstairs, where I say my goodbyes to people pretending to be melancholy when they are the ones who are forcing me to say goodbye. I suppose, however, that it is a bit unreasonable to lump Lourdes into the group with my parents. Her tears are legitimate, and I know that I will miss her for real.

In fact, it's terrible to see her this much pain when she's done nothing. She didn't make this choice, and neither did I. She is as innocent as me yet got landed with a sorrowful fate as a result of that choice. She is just as affected by our parents' decision as I am.

"Olivier, please don't go," she wails, her body flung towards mine with her hands locked on my shoulders and weighing me down so that I'll stay. She reflects how I truly feel inside but am not authorized to feel publicly or in front of my parents, the unmediated core of innocence that I am forced to relinquish.

"It's out of my hands."

It hurts me to say this to her, to say it in such a monotone as if it doesn't affect me emotionally and as if I can just detach myself from it, which I can't. It's the truth, but it's an arduous truth that I wish I could spare my sister from.

"Oh how Maman and Papa make you suffer."

At least _she_ understands. She's always understood. Not as much as Alexei, but she's done far more than my parents ever have. How can I abandon Lourdes here with the people she comprehends were the ones who shipped me away? How can I bear the cognizance that she will be alone for as long as I'm away?

"It's nothing new, Lourdes. It's what they've always wanted me to do, that's all. It would've happened at some point naturally, and I guess that point is now."

I say that Alexei has taught me to be a new person, yet I am so complacent with my circumstances, which is exactly what Alexei says he can't stand. Maybe I can reassure myself by claiming that this facade is only to protect Lourdes. Maybe that's the verity.

"Don't say that, Olivier. You have your entire life ahead of you. Don't let it be ripped away by people who only want to use you as a pawn in their sick games."

Fearing that she's onto something important, something that I always include in my description of war, something that my parents can't hear without blaming either me or Lourdes, I wrap up our conversation rather abruptly. "I'm sorry, Lourdes. I need to go."

Gathering my affairs, I ready myself to leave roughly. I drop two kisses to my sister's cheek as usual, turn my back to avoid having to see her pain any longer, and try my best not to cry as I walk through the door for the last time in a while. My next path leads to Alexei.

**~~~~~**

**A/N: lmaooooooooo y'all say goodbye 2 happiness**

**comment on ur fave parts so we can scream 2gether**

**~Dakotass**


	9. beep beep kill me

Olivier promised me that the next time he would see me would be to tell me of the decision that his parents have reached about whether or not I can accompany him to France after his summer journey in Russia. I've been anxiously waiting for him to return to me with the news, and so far it's been a little under a day. I expected him to come back in an instant with the final decision, but it seems as though he took his merry time and ate some dinner, slept at his house, ate some breakfast, and is now doing who knows what in lieu of soothing my restless spirit like I guessed that he would. Except I _shouldn't_ guess that his reason for taking so long is that straightforward. He could be doing something imperative to the survival of mankind, and maybe I just don't know it as a result of how busy he is completing his mission. Maybe I should cut him some slack and be patient.

Soon enough, Olivier arrives in my line of sight, but his expression indicates that the news I attended isn't so pleasant. He looks as though he's on a frantic hunt for me. His head switches back and forth, while his eyes are blocked by a film of fright. He should know exactly where I am located, but his fear seems to be obstructing his sensibility, and it has the same effect on me. I am suddenly clogged with apprehension for what Olivier has to tell me, and I find myself fearing the point when he reaches me. But it is inevitable, and he is soon by my side. I can see clearly into his eyes and develop a new sense of just how terrified he is.

"So what did your parents say about my coming back to France with you?" Despite my anxiety, my expression harbors a large portion of prospect that the answer is a positive one -- though, judging from how Olivier looks, I doubt it is.

Olivier is silent, not because he has nothing to say, but because he can't push the words out, no matter how hard he tries. Tears hinder his ability to speak precisely, or speak at all. He can't even meet my eyes, instead focusing on wiping his own eyes and his tears. I allot him a few moments to compose himself before he begins by informing me, "I'm afraid I'll be leaving sooner than I thought."

A subtle word in what Olivier just said changes the fear that I'm experiencing from secondhand to a personal manifestation. "Wait, Olivier -- why didn't you say 'we'?"

"Alexei...," he draws out to stall time, complimented by fiddling with his hands, as I've never seen him do.

He's usually so confident. He's Olivier Renaud, a rich French aristocrat with lots of power and years of accumulating confidence. I saw the way the girls looked at him at the ball -- they were all absolutely smitten with him, yet he always remains collected around them. He is sure of himself, but not too much so, which earns him the title of confident and not the title of arrogant.

But this Olivier that I see before me...this is not the one I know. The Olivier that I know can always speak clearly, which he demonstrates with everyone that he talks to. The Olivier that I know can force his words out of his mouth. Who is this person that weeps before me? Is it the state of Olivier Renaud captured by the darker points of the human psyche? Whatever it is, it pains me to behold it.

"What is it? Did your parents say no?"

"No, not directly, but..."

The more he buys time, the more nervous I become. I don't want to explode from a lack of patience, so I prompt him. "Olivier, just say it."

Now he weaves a connection between both of our pairs of eyes, and he blurts out, "I'm not sure that we'll ever see each other again."

The bluntness of the statement hits me full force. He spent so much time stalling, and now as compensation he spends no time making it sound all sugary, and I am faced with the harsh, bitter reality that I am going to lose the only person I truly love.

"And why is that? Olivier, you can't just leave me like this."

"It's not my choice, Alexei," he laments. "It's my parents' choice."

"And what have they decided?" My hands find a place on my hips, and my feet arrange themselves in an accusing stance like an impatient mother scolding her child.

"My father, as you don't know, is very respected in the military, and he wants me to continue his legacy by joining myself, but I have no say in it, so I guess this is goodbye."

"Goodbye?" I exclaim, a bit too loud to be inconspicuous, but I don't give a shit, because I'm enraged by how unfair this entire thing is. "We barely just said hello for the first time!"

"I have to meet my father at ten o'clock, so just let me do what I need to do, and let's not waste time arguing what can't be changed."

I shake my head, not wanting to believe that he's giving up so easy, not after everything he claims to have learned from me. "I thought I taught you a thing or two about not being complacent with the state of things."

"Alexei..." he starts with the intention of calming me down, but I passed calm a long time ago.

"No! I demand to speak with your father!"

"Alexei, please," he pleads, and I eventually agree to settle down for a moment, though I still retain my slightly angered expression.

"Fine."

"I want you to know that somehow I _will_ find you again. Hope is not all lost, my love."

My dissatisfaction forces me to scowl. "You'd better make good on that promise, Olivier Renaud."

The snoring of the bell from the church rumbles throughout this section of Saint Petersburg, signaling that we only have a quarter of an hour before Olivier is shipped back to France to be killed along with thousands of other boys his age.

Olivier's eyes jump to his pocketwatch then back up to me. "It's fifteen minutes until my father wants me to be standing by his side at the train station, and factoring in the walking time, I have to leave within the next minute in order to make it on time, so we must quickly say our goodbyes and part ways."

I know by saying this it will only serve to make him want to stay with me even more, but I feel that it's necessary to express. "Olivier Renaud, I love you so--"

But Olivier does not care for how I end that sentence, because he already knows. He voices his goodbyes with a passionate dance upon my lips, and it says all that he needs it to say. I understand. I follow in his footsteps by exploiting the method of increasing the level of passion to convey how strong my emotions are. We're desperate, the both of us. This is our sign to each other.

To conserve time so as to not be late to his very important rendez-vous, he pulls away, breathless. "I will find you soon, my love," he assures me with a frantic nod. Olivier then takes one last silent look at me before running back into the main portion of the Saint Petersburg streets. And just like that, he's gone for who knows how long. I should've cherished him more, but I didn't, and now he's on the way to a potential death. What a fool I have been.

"All this time, you've been in love with that guy?" says a voice that I had no idea was there before, a voice belonging to none other than Anatole, who I knew would rip me to shreds if he found out and has therefore been shielded from my relationship with Olivier to protect us all. "If so, that really sucks ass now that he's leaving you for the military. I would say we should join him if you weren't such a scrawny rat boy."

I'm used to when Anatole insults me like this, but I only let him get away with it if it's true. If it's not, I make sure to remind him that he isn't so hot either. Even in times of distress, Anatole is always there to switch the conversation to an alternate emotion.

"You're not so different yourself," I counter, but Anatole is already pondering a new topic.

"You know, maybe we should actually join," he suggests, catching me completely off guard.

"Why on earth would we do that? Military enlistment might as well be called walking towards death."

That's the reason why I am so terrified for what might happen to Olivier. I can never know when a conflict may strike. War comes at the unexpected times when either the entire force of people involved are approaching the boiling point or when the world finally reposes, and it tears everything apart in its wake. I'm just worried that Olivier will be left in the rubble. It's more likely than one may think, actually, which means that Olivier might end up dead from his service in the military, and I don't have to worry about missing his return that way. I can join the army with no obligations, and it'll do more to occupy me than sitting alone back in Saint Petersburg where all our memories hang as ghosts in the air. I'll do it. I'll enlist.

"Yeah, but think of the food that we don't have to steal in order to eat. Think of the shelter. Think of the _girls_." Anatole's brows form waves up and down, implying that I, someone who _just_ displayed a massive amount of affection for a man, am interested in girls to the best of his knowledge. He must be missing a lot.

"I thought my kissing Olivier would make it pretty clear that girls are the last thing on my mind."

Anatole rolls his eyes while probably cursing me in his head for getting so technical about this. "But still. What do you say?"

Having already made up my mind, I vocally express my disposition towards the idea so that we can commence with the first steps to fulfill it. "If it keeps us off the streets, why not?"

"Well look how quickly you changed your mind! I'm the master of persuasion, am I not?" How typical of Anatole to shift a victory that I created to one that makes him seem like _he_ created it. Olivier is the right amount of confident, but Anatole crosses the line sometimes, and it is my duty to set him straight.

"Don't flatter yourself."

~~~~~

**A/N: goddamn why are they all so stupid**

**maybe it's because I outlined for this to happen ??? lmao**

**~Dakoots**  


	10. surprise surprise it's me napoleon

Just as I expected, this army life sucks ass. I have the advantage of not being at the way bottom of the ranks, but I'm still far enough from the top that I could die and no one would ever know. I am the fittest physically than I have ever been in my life due to the overly vigorous workouts that I push myself through, but my body aches more often than it should, sometimes to the point where I can only move an inch at a time. And the best part is that we have to do this under the summer sun, where we accumulate sweat that quickly ruins our clothes unless we wash them in a nearby body of water, which becomes a tedious task after a short period of time. All of this torture is to make us the perfect soldier, but all it makes us is exhausted.

To be my optimistic self, I am required to include at least one positive thing about being in this army to counter my whole list of cons, so I will say that it feels surprisingly refreshing to be surrounded by only the French language, but it is also a bit sickening, too, as it reminds me of the people with whom I've spent my entire life -- my parents who sent me to this prison, and all the aristocrats that they fraternize with. It was much more refreshing to hear the voice of Alexei Kozlov, chattering in Russian like music that I can fully understand, music that comes from the soul and not from the lies collected from gossip, music that is linked solely and purely to my love Alexei.

It has been nearly a month since I left Alexei in that cold, dark alley in Saint Petersburg, yet my mind rarely strays from him. I still feel his lips on mine as if I were there in Russia instead of many kilometers away in France. I still expect him to be there sleeping by my side like he used to do sometimes, yet I wake up with nothing but cold sheets. I still expect to be joyous and then remind myself that there's nothing to be joyous _for_. I've met a few people who have briefly taken my mind off of Alexei, but none of them compare to what I left behind in a country completely different from this one.

One of those people that I've met is a man with the last name of Gauthier. He stands above me in ranking, so he uses me as his advisor, while the rest of our division uses me to translate whatever documents they can find in Russian, just in case they're important. Gauthier and I, we've formed a bond throughout the month that I've been here, and although it doesn't come close to the bond I share with Alexei, it's nice to have someone to confide in during the time that we are split. I first started out in a lower position than the one that I currently hold, and he took an interest in me not because he has a connection with my father, but because he admired my resilience and my apparent dedication to France, whatever that means. As he watched me grow, he decided that it would be time to promote me to his primary advice giver. When Gauthier talks to me, he never retains any fear of saying the wrong thing. When _I_ talk to _him_ , I _always_ retain fear of saying the wrong thing. For some reason, I don't feel like I can trust him. Maybe it's because my position is too feeble because of the fact that it is under his. One wrong move and I don't return to Alexei. I promised him that I would come back to be with him. Whatever I do, I cannot die.

Gauthier remarked when we first met that I am smart, that he has never seen anyone think in exactly the same way I do. I want to tell him that the only reason why I am so dedicated to my training and my strategies is because my top priority is coming back home to someone in one living piece, but I'm apparently too smart to say anything. So instead, I hang around in his tent, discussing whatever needs to be discussed. This just works for us. We hide from each other. In fact, I don't even know his first name, and I doubt that he knows mine either. A part of that might just be because we have to maintain our professional relationship, but judging from Gauthier's demeanor, I don't think he gives a shit about being professional, at least not with me. I suppose he considers me a friend, while I just consider him one more person I have to hide from. If Gauthier weren't so absorbed in having fun and joking around with me, he might notice that I keep my distance from him, that I only stand -- not sit -- in his tent (and stand rigidly), that I only smile when the social cues that I have practiced since birth prompt me to do so. Since I've let my rich boy facade crumble a bit after joining the army, nobles would be able to tell that I'm being just as fake as them, but someone like Gauthier doesn't seem like the type to associate himself with nobles and therefore would not pick up on my falsity, so I let it slide as it is.

At the moment, he has me reviewing a letter that he drafted to his romantic interest who isn't yet his, asking me if it's too cheesy or too creepy or too straightforward. His reasoning for tasking me with this is because I'm -- using his own words, not mine -- a handsome young man who must have all the ladies strung on my arm back home, and I didn't have the heart to tell him that I only have one person strung on my arm, and that person isn't a girl, either. I figure I can revise his poem regardless of which sex I prefer, though. So far it isn't so terrible, but he does sound a bit desperate, which I note in the margins.

I've almost finished my work when the calm lack of noise is interrupted by a courier bursting into the tent with something to present to Gauthier. He leaves silently after handing it to him, offering no explanation for what he just gave us, and Gauthier drops what he was doing to instead focus on this new token that he's come into possession of. I cross the tent and position myself behind him so that I can read from the same angle as him.

I take the time to try and read the entire letter word for word, while Gauthier shows himself to be someone who skims letters, so he folds the paper back up before I gather the essential information.

"We have new orders, Renaud." Gauthier turns around in his seat to look up at me. "Napoleon has begun his quest into Russia."

Instantly my mind flashes to Alexei and his wellbeing, and panic swells in my chest. "What for?"

"It doesn't say exactly what the reason is, but you know how Napoleon acts. He's on his righteous journey for fame, glory, and power, and no one dares to stop him."

Yes, I know exactly how Napoleon acts. He is so full of himself and so confident in his abilities to the point where he just looks foolish sometimes. Now he has made a grave mistake because of how much he unjustly believes in himself, and innocent people will pay for it.

"So what do _we_ do? How do _we_ fit into all of this?"

"We're a part of his Grande Armée, so it's only natural that we follow him into Russia."

The fact that we adhere to every whim of Napoleon sickens me. How patriotic are we? How dedicated to the cause are we? I know that this is how an army is supposed to function -- follow the leader's commands to reach a success -- but it seems so blind to me. If one unintelligent leader has control over a whole army, chaos could ensue on a widespread level, and soon enough, he will have wasted thousands of lives just to accomplish nothing.

"We'll all die there. I've been to Russia, and trust me -- it's not so welcoming to outsiders. The nature itself seeks to kill you, and there is no debate over whether or not the army will use our disadvantages to destroy us."

Russia is a huge country in which our army could easily get lost, and if we don't, the long walk to any of our destinations through the harsh winter or the dry summer would swiftly be the death of our troops. Not to mention a lack of food sufficient for the largest army that Napoleon has ever amassed, as well as the horses that his army rides. This entire situation is a mess that no one but Napoleon can solve, but from the looks of it, he isn't turning back anytime soon, not with the personality that he fosters.

"Even if that's so, there's nothing we can do about it. You signed up for the army knowing that you have to follow the rules of its leader. Don't renege on your moral contract now."

Remembering that I have to watch my mouth while in the presence of anyone affiliated with the army, I end my train of thought right then and there and make no further protests, not even to tell Gauthier that I wasn't the one who signed up and was actually very much in opposition to it. I've always been very cautious around Gauthier. I can't slip up when it matters the most. Insulting Napoleon himself is worth a great deal of punishment depending on who you voice your disapproving opinion to. Luckily Gauthier isn't offended by this level of distrust in the army's leader.

"If you'll excuse me," Gauthier proceeds, rising from his chair, "I must speak with some other members of the army. Thank you for revising my letter, Renaud."

As soon as Gauthier exits the room, I hastily move towards his desk, grab a quill and a piece of paper, and pen a letter to my beloved Alexei who is back in Russia, Napoleon's next victim. I need to know that he is safe there and that he has a head's up. This might be considered treason to give secrets to the enemy, but I don't care much about treason. I never wanted to be here in the first place, and if I am executed for such a crime, then at least Alexei can live securely in the benefits that my treason would provide him with. I don't know how he would receive this letter, considering he has no address, but I will find a way to make it work. He matters to much to me to just let him stay unsafe as Napoleon's troops march to capture his home.

_My dearest Alexei,_

_I am not entirely sure if this letter will reach you, but I can take risks if it means that there's at least the smallest chance that you will find this. I recently heard that Napoleon's plan is to invade Russia, and since you are a part of that nation, I find it fitting to tell you so that you can take any necessary precautions to ensure your safety. I am leaving it to you to decide what to do._

_Personally, I am terrified for what is about to happen. I am aware that I promised you that I would return, but now I have no clue if I will. Napoleon is hotheaded and might lead us into a ditch resulting in thousands of lives being lost, and I may be on the list -- and so may you. Despite that, I want you to be strong and carry on as if everything is well. Be blissful while you still can._

_I miss you and wish each day that we could be together, but unfortunately my circumstances do not allow it to be so. However, do not worry, my love. It will work out for us. I will try my absolute best to stay alive just to see your face, even if it is only briefly. Love will carry me to you._

_I love you and hope that you are safe,_

_Olivier_

_P.S. As soon as you read this letter, please dispose of it completely by burning it or using some similar method._

In the end, it turns out that I am the one who disposes of the letter by crumpling it up and shoving it in my clothes to throw away later in a place that isn't so dangerous. For some reason, I can't bring myself to send this letter. Maybe it's because it's impossible and have just now realized it, or maybe it's because of the risk to me. Alexei should be fine if he hears word of the invasion early and isn't in the army having to wrestle us back into France. The army is the real danger. It is my faith that Alexei will be fine. I have to be optimistic, after all.

**~~~~~**

**A/N: this is the longest chapter so far**

**but shiiiiiiit it's getting wild**

**~Dakotoe**  


	11. patriotism? can't relate

Joining the army is possibly one of the worst decisions that I have ever made in my life. I cannot believe I allowed Anatole to drag me into this giant mess. It's not just about Olivier anymore. Yeah, I miss him like hell, but that would still be the outcome whether or not I were in the army. He would be gone for a long time, and I would return to my boring life of starvation and monotony, but he would be gone for the same amount of time if I joined the army, too. That's not the problem. The problem is that now I have to listen to disgusting amounts of patriotism swarming around my head, as well as taunts against the French, and I am forced to remain silent, because loving a Frenchman in the army that has marched illegally on my country's soil is a crime in the eyes of these men who sit around me at camp.

It is my belief that the fact that Russia has been invaded makes the Russian soldiers and the Russian citizens even more loving of their country. They have to be seen as strongly loyal to their country so that it will be more difficult to take down because of how much support it has from the people living there and the people defending it in the fields. Sure, it might work, but it does nothing to lessen the frequent talk of how powerful the motherland is. They have too much faith in Russia. While I love my country, too, I don't overestimate its abilities because of how blinded by patriotism I am. I love in moderation when it comes to my country but love in excess when it comes to what I can without any consequences to come from it.

Naturally the Russian soldiers throw insults at the French as well, because the French invaded our country, but these insults are so abundant and so harsh that I start to wonder if there wasn't pre-existing hatred for the French even before they provoked us. It sickens me each time they carelessly throw out an overgeneralization about a group of people as diverse as our own, but I have to hear each and every word, because the times when we're stationed at camp sitting on logs and such -- those are the times when I eat whatever food I can call breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and those are the times when the other soldiers are also free from activities and feel the need to pump out more of their repulsive nationalism.

I have no clue how they find new things to say about Russia or the French, but they generate them somehow, as there is never a lull in their conversations. Maybe they spend their time thinking of things to share with the rest of the group when they're supposed to be actively engaged in the activities. Whatever the reason is, it works well in their favor and not so much in mine.

We sit around our little camp on some logs that we pulled out of the woods somewhere, and another day brings another one of their discussions that I am obligated to listen to. It's not like I'm not upset that the French have invaded my country -- the only one that I've ever lived in and have learned to love. In fact, I _am_ very emotionally distressed about the thought of having my home snatched away from me by an arrogant leader who knows nothing of Russia, but I don't take the time to slander the other side like the guys around me to do make themselves feel better about their situation. Of course I wouldn't invite a bunch of French soldiers over for a cheerful dinner party to celebrate their passage into my country, but growing animosity between two sides doesn't make it any less difficult to mend relations after the war is done. And some of these French soldiers -- like Olivier -- didn't sign up for the army with the intention of going to war. A tiny bit of sympathy for your enemy goes a long way for not destroying everything in sight.

Anatole has thoroughly disappointed me with how he's been acting since he joined the army. Now he has decided that he doesn't care about Olivier's French identity and how much he means to me, because instead he really enjoys insulting the French almost as much as the other guys. He takes part in the jeering games that only serve to make me cringe to my core, shouting and cheering for whatever the other guys shout and cheer for. I think that Anatole has become a completely different person, actually. Maybe I switched him up with another Anatole, and the real Anatole from the streets of Saint Petersburg is in a different division, because I do not recognize this person in front of me. He has grown away from me and closer towards these other men who will only support him for as long as the war will last, while I have supported him for as long as we have been friends. The military changes people, perhaps, but not in a beneficial way for Anatole. With increased strength in his body comes increased strength in his opinions, it seems.

"All this time in the military, and we have not yet encountered one of those manifestations of French scum," says the man seated across from me. "I told my father I would bring back a celebratory scalp to show him, but so far I have none."

I have been describing their words as disgusting for their blatant nationalism, but that image that has just been presented in my mind is veritably disgusting. I look over at Anatole to see if he is equally as repulsed, but all I see is a wide sneer, which only increases how repulsed I am.

"Why bring back just one when we can have the entire army when we're through with them?" Anatole suggests, matching the pugnacious expression of the other guy.

The first man laughs and leans over to the soldier sitting beside him while pointing back at Anatole. "I like this one."

"And believe me," Anatole continues, dreams of glory sliding across his lips, "we _will_ have the entire army."

The spirits of those in the camp surrounding me lift higher and higher until they reach the plain of egotism. They rejoice.

For me, the sticky situation places a gag over my mouth, and I say nothing.

~~~~~

**A/N: so now we've checked in with both olivier and alexei in the army ;)))**

**thanks if u made it this far**

**~Dakootie**


	12. owo what's this

[Music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSVTEY588Wc)

Thinking that it is my eternal duty to advise Gauthier when he should be able to advise himself -- well I suppose it _is_ my eternal duty, but I feel like he can do more to help himself than go directly to me when the answer isn't completely clear -- he has invited me to his tent to discuss something which he told the courier to say was of grave importance. Knowing Gauthier and how dramatic he can be at times, I doubt that it's actually as important as he instructed the courier to make it seem. He probably received a letter in return from his mistress back in France and wants me to review it again to find out exactly what she's implying with each word and to help him write a response equally as precise. Gauthier is a master of war strategy, but he is absolutely worthless when it comes to love strategy, so he employs me to assist him. I don't know whether I should feel honored or surprised with my abilities.

When I arrive at Gauthier's tent, my previous stance of denying how important the matter is falls away a bit once I see the massive amount of stress plaguing Gauthier's body and mind. His head is in his hands, his hair tumbling messily over his forehead, a huge difference from his usually combed and clean hairstyle, and if I were able to see his eyes, I can predict that I would see shadowy rings hollowing out the liveliness of his eyes.

Once he has detected that I am in his tent, he looks up at me, and just as I predicted, I see the dark circles crystal clear. He wastes no time greeting me, only cuts to the chase to save our precious hours needed to solve whatever problem he has called me in for. "Follow me," he orders, rising from his desk and walking around it to stand closer towards me and lead me out of the tent.

"Where are we going?" I ask, struggling to keep up with Gauthier's rapid pace. Now I understand why he gets so much done -- he walks so damn fast.

He doesn't glance back to answer my question, so I am forced to struggle to hear him among the voices chatting away around our camp -- voices, I notice, that have become fewer since yesterday. "The infirmary, if we can even call it that with the shabby state that it's in."

I have passed two months in this army, and almost one month of that has included the combats between France and Russia, yet before a few days ago we had never come into contact with any soldiers from the enemy side. But as I said, that was a few days ago. A terror named the Battle of Smolensk struck first on the sixteenth of August, then again the next day, and one final time yesterday, and it took all that it could fit in its greedy hands. Thousands of troops were stolen away from this earth, and thousands more were accidentally dropped from death's hands into the infirmary, where they now plead with all the might of their vocal cords for death to take them back. Sympathy makes me wish the same thing for them. I can't stand to hear those wails any longer. In all of those two months, I have never visited any type of army infirmary, either, but I should've done it before the battle, when the screams weren't so vivid. Now Gauthier is leading me into a living hell enclosed within a military tent.

I glimpse the first frame of my time in the infirmary, and I already want desperately to leave. A whole lot of men lie on what could be called a cot if we're stretching the limits but in reality is just a blanket filled with holes and blood with weak supports under it. Severed body parts are strewn around the floor encircling the cots, while some lie on the bed exactly where they were amputated. But the physical conditions within the infirmary aren't nearly the worst part. The worst part is the broken soldiers that lie within. Their cries fill the tent and never end. Around them, the nurses' faces are scrunched in both disgust and worry for the soldiers to whom they tend as they frantically rush to cure their ailments.

This is exactly why I protest war. These young men are suffering with no one to care about them except the nurses who don't even know their names. _These_ are the men who always show up in my argument about why war is immoral. All of this mess could have been avoided with a bit of negotiation. Why does Napoleon have to feel as though the entire world is his but currently in the hands of oppressors? It does nothing for the people living in the countries he lusts over. Napoleon himself is the oppressor if there is one. Napoleon is the reason why these men can find no peace.

I am contacted through a short lock of the eyes by one of the soldiers suffering on his cot, a silent prayer that I will help him. If this were any random soldier, I would be thoroughly haunted, but the fact that this man resembles Alexei, whose current state I do not know, makes me wonder if it could be him but in a cot at a Russian hospital somewhere. This fate is plausible, even for people not involved with the war. War steals us all, no matter who you are.

"Why did you bring me here?" I ask, pulling my vision away from this underworld and over towards Gauthier. My face is washed by horror. My eyes are deep with fear.

"I need to ask you what we can do about this."

I don't know why Gauthier assumes that I can mend all that is wrong in these circumstances. He uses me as his advisor, but that doesn't mean that I have all the answers that he doesn't. I am horrified by this whole scene, and part of that horror stems from not being able to do much to fix it completely.

"Well for starters, we could always just end the war," I suggest, shortly letting down my facade of dedication to France and the war effort in front of a man I don't trust.

"You and I both know that Napoleon isn't going to listen to that proposal, and you might want to hold your tongue when speaking ill of your general's plans. You could be in serious trouble if anyone high up in the ranks heard you."

I am aware of the consequences of speaking ill of Napoleon, and that is precisely why I never said anything blatantly against him while in the presence of Gauthier or any of the soldiers. I don't know where their loyalties lie.

"Well what is it that I'm supposed to fix? It's not like I can just magically invent a treatment to treat all wounds."

"That's not what I'm asking you to do," Gauthier clarifies. "I'm asking for a potential solution to other areas that might be able to be helped, like the rampant spread of dysentery and other such diseases that we could avoid by making some changes around here. We're also starving, Renaud. The Russians have taken to burning their own food -- which we all find appalling but above all terribly inconvenient -- and there is little for us to eat. When we go outside at night to hunt for food, we always return with fewer men than before because of reported Slavic citizens finding us, kidnapping us, and killing us, and the Russians have taken some of our soldiers as prisoners of war. We've started to eat our horses as a solution to our hunger, an essential portion of our supplies, and without our horses, we move far slower than before, which in turn puts us at a disadvantage against the Russian army. Because all of those aforementioned things, we are losing men at an alarming rate, and the chances of winning are less and less by the day."

From the very beginning, I knew the war was an unfortunate idea. I knew the risks of disease that occurs during every war. And if everything that Gauthier just listed isn't wretched enough, frigid temperatures will arrive in Russia soon, and our French bodies will not be able to handle it. I pity the souls who shall be doomed under the force of the snow.

"What do you want me to do about it?" I ask, frustrated with how much misplaced faith Gauthier has in me.

"You're my advisor, Renaud. Just...think of something to fix it, and if you can't fix it, at least think of something to soothe my mind. Give me a way to ignore my conscience."

Even if Gauthier can't do a single thing for these soldiers, it is his duty to remember them so that this doesn't happen again. Although I am beyond sickened by this display so typical of war, I am certain that I will make an effort to keep these men in my mind forever. This image cannot be repeated. The human soul should never be stripped down to this state and witnessed writhing within it.

Utterly appalled, my face skews to the color of disbelief derived from offense. "How could you forget these faces in the infirmary? How could you neglect them so selfishly?" My breath is heavy yet agitated, struck by passion.

"There's not much I can do for them, so there's no use weeping over what cannot be repaired."

Gauthier is exactly the kind of complacent figure that Alexei told me not to trust. Luckily for me, I've kept my distance well enough.

I look away from the scene. "I'm not sure I can help you, Gauthier," I lie, and walk as far as it takes to drown out the screams.

**~~~~~**

**A/N: as you can see, war sucks ass**

**if you're enjoying this story's concept, I highly recommend you watch BBC's War & Peace, which is about the French invasion along with some other topics, and it's very good with an amazing soundtrack so yeah (if you watch it or have seen it, leave a comment telling me how you like it) and also you'll see some songs from the soundtrack at the beginning of chapters (like this one, for example)**

**~Dakotot**


	13. war is hell

[Music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=XFHYQihGMk0)

A grand collection of French soldiers stations itself level to the horizon as the sun ascends behind them, reveling in their false notions of divinity, and I want to shout at them that there is nothing divine about claiming land that has never been theirs and paying for it with thousands of precious human lives, but my voice would not carry far enough, nor would it break their wall of godliness. They are preparing to strike us and continue on to Moscow, the jewel of Russia, which is their ultimate prize to signal their victory, and we Russian soldiers are preparing to defend it.

We have been waiting for their army to arrive in the town of Borodino, thus we are ready for when they advance towards us for a long and bloody battle. Bagration, our leader, assured us that this would all end in a pyrrhic outcome, but he still doesn't precisely know how much it will take for us to win despite the fact. I can estimate that almost every blade of grass in and around the village will host at least one drop of blood from the soldiers that march towards their death upon them.

The majority of the Russian soldiers positioned in the lines in front of me, behind me, and next to me are shaking uncontrollably with fear. Their entire body clatters against itself as they pray to God that this will not be the last of them, that their body will not be wasted on a battlefield far from home. Their souls have been robbed of their clothes and now stand naked in this small town. I can see within them and pick out almost every emotion rumbling inside the soldiers like an earthquake. I look to my left and to my right and wonder if I will ever see these men again after today. A part of me knows that I won't.

Anatole is as ready as he has ever been, as if he has completely neglected what Bagration said. He has transformed into the men that he sits with around the camp, the men that I despise, but I still feel a dash of pity for the boy as I behold him next to me, his eyes burning with excitement, rushing into the pits of hell with a confident smile. His attitude will ensure that he will be the first to die, and I will have lost my only friend in the army to a foolish, short-lived dream of glory. He had said that he wanted to bring back the scalp of a French soldier, but I am afraid that it will be Anatole's scalp instead that returns to a French soldier's home to be ogled at. We can only hope for the best.

With each second, the French army draws closer and closer, and I am confident of only one thing: there will be a whole lot of prayers this day.

~~~~~

The sky does not rain water to quench our thirst, rather blood to quench our craving for mass destruction in order to achieve what we desire. The ground has turned into a welcoming family for a mixture of displaced dirt, blood, and corpses. Is anywhere safe, or has every inch of land been defaced so that the soldiers upon it are trapped here to suffer? Everywhere that I look has no promise of safety. It seems as though safety retreated a long time ago.

Therefore, every millisecond matters on this battlefield. One millisecond could be blessed by security, and the next could be plagued by death. One must be constantly vigilant in order to have even the slightest chance of making it out of here alive. I often find myself whipping my head around in every direction to ensure that I am aware of anyone and everyone that could be a conceivable threat to my survival.

My heart drums its fists rapidly against my ribcage, yelling to be let out. Sweat emerges from my skin in tiny dew drops from the morning setting. My breath is shoved out of my exhausted lungs in groups known as panting. My pulse swims up to my temples and kicks the most sensitive areas to demand that my brain do something about the insurmountable chaos polluting the air, but there is no solution to what several powerful people have done to us. Why do good men have to die because bad men can't make neat decisions?

My training has taught me how to wield a gun, but all of those tips and instructions that I've learned fly right out of the window of my mind now that I have an opportunity to apply them in a place where it is crucial that I do. Because my body and head are shifting all around the town of Borodino, my gun follows suit, swinging through the air as I go. Except this time, it lands right against the stomach of an approaching French soldier. And panicked, I do what is programmed into every child's head as the end goal of guns when one first learns about them, the natural instinct -- I pull the trigger.

And just like that, I have killed a man. I took my gun, positioned it in an accurate place, and fired, straight into a French soldier's body, and now he's dead because of me. I really just stole a human's life away from him, a crime that I always protest and always have but a crime that I now perpetrate. Why didn't I let him shoot me first when I have nothing to lose? What has war done to me?

Across the battlefield, I glimpse a soldier from the other side, a Frenchman just as terrified as I am. We regard each other for a while, not wanting to ever look away -- as if we have a special connection to each other -- and experience the same thoughts of feeling understood in this moment, of seeing each other's souls rawly. And I think I recognize this particular soul. I open my mouth to call to him but am cut short by a surprise attack hidden under the earth.

I am flung back by the sudden explosion, spending a few seconds cutting through the air until the dense ground catches me with a thud and the injury of a few locations on me and in me. A fountain of dirt sprays forth from the terrain, following my same course of involuntary action before landing on top of me. I lie in this supine position for who knows how long, attempting to figure out what just happened to me and what effects it will have on my body. The Frenchman is out of my sight now, possibly forever.

As soon as I recover sufficiently from the blast -- that is, I can open my eyes and see the world clearly enough -- I notice that an essential piece to me is missing. A sharp ring rolls through my left ear and does not cease, but in my right, there is nothing there anymore. Is this only temporary, or have I lost my hearing? There is no time to ponder this, however, as there could be another threat approaching, one much more grave than my hearing.

I survey my surroundings before standing up in order to make certain that there is no one planning to assail me from any direction, and by surprise I come face to face with Anatole, a boy rendered incapable of moving his limbs due to the overwhelming pain caused by a fatal injury in his torso. The fighting rages on in the distance, with new atrocities being committed every second, but the most atrocious thing to me is that my childhood friend is parting without me.

[Music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uarBdLJx6FQ)

"Anatole!" I shriek, gathering him in my arms as he wrestles with forming words to explain his dilemma.

"I've been shot," he tells me, stating the obvious as a form of a joke that he tries to laugh at but fails to do without coughing up some more blood in the process. Even while stepping closer and closer to death with each second, he retains his inappropriate sense of humor.

Frantically searching around for something to mop up the blood and prevent it from spilling out further, I soon decide to just take supplies from a cadaver lying next to us. I'm sure he won't have any need of it in heaven. I press the cloth to Anatole's wound and apply pressure, but I'm not done talking yet. I need to keep him conscious and with me for as long as possible, but I still have an unsolved inquiry. "Fucking hell, Anatole, why aren't you dead yet?"

I'm no doctor. I know nothing about the human body, having dropped out of school early from a lack of adequate money. Even if I were willing to take a wild chance and try to fix him, I also have no supplies. Anatole is going to die, and he's going to die _soon_ , with the bullet that killed him still lodged inside his body. This is exactly what I predicted would happen. He was too enthusiastic about a dangerous game, and now he is forced to pay the price with his life. I'm sorry to say it, but there's nothing I can do for him besides stay here and keep him company until he passes.

Anatole furrows his brow, inadvertently splitting cracks into the layer of blood and dirt coating his face. "That's a sort of...odd question to be asking. I thought I was your best friend."

"Do you have any idea what happened? Do you remember it at all?"

Anatole nods but doesn't respond to my question until he inspects his body one more time. "The soldier shot me somewhere in the torso, but some sort of ethics complex that he seems to have compelled him to help me fall gently to the ground. His hair...it was curly and blonde, and his eyes...I saw a shade of blue very close to the color of sapphires as he held me, but that's all I could distinguish. It all happened so fast, and I..." Anatole pauses, biting down on his lip as a tear slithers slowly down his cheek. All of the sudden he is moved to a sentiment that I have never before seen in him. He looks me straight in the eye, and I am forced to witness the storm of emotion within his own set. "Alexei, I don't want to die."

And this is where Anatole finally breaks. Not once have I seen him cry, not in any of the years that we've been together on the streets of Saint Petersburg, fighting back against a tough condition. We were starving and almost froze to death during the winters, yet he shed no tears through it all. I have always admired him for his strength from the very beginning. Before we ended up on the streets together, he struggled with parents who cared very little about him and took to physical violence as a twisted method of discipline and anger management, but he held himself together. He was then thrown out from his home at seventeen, and instead of feeling sorry for himself, he quickly figured out how to survive on his own. Anatole has never been complacent with his circumstances, and for that, I revere him greatly.

Since all of this is true, then who is this Anatole that quivers in my arms, fearing that his life may be captured too early? It is because his soul is exposed to me in this moment, like every man's soul is when injured in war, and I can see just how afraid Anatole really is. Not even an eternal comedian can escape his own mind.

"I don't want to die," Anatole repeats, steadying his breathing before he adds, "but I know that I'm going to."

I tenderly brush his hair back with my thumb like a mother that actually loved him dearly, like a mother whose pride and joy is being taken unfairly from her. "Anatole..."

Collecting all of his remaining strength into one movement, he places his hand on my arm as a reassurance. "It's okay, Alexei. You don't have to lie to me. A wound like this doesn't look very promising for survival, and even _I_ can see that."

"Is it time to finally say I love you?" I ask.

"I think so," he murmurs in reply.

I rip my focus from my dying friend, which is when the tears conclude that it's an appropriate time to make their descent. "Anatole, please don't go," I beg, a crying mess, while Anatole has lapsed into calmness. He has accepted his fate.

He pushes out a sad smile, the first and last of its kind. "When the time comes, we will find each other in the place where no one starves or suffers. We will be happy there, Alexei. I promise you."

"Anatole, I love you," I divulge while I still have the chance to say it, but it appears that my declaration is only a whisper into the void. Anatole is gone, and I let myself weep over his memory.

**~~~~~**

**A/N: well isn't that just dandy**

**but do y'all feel bad for Anatole now, bc I do**

**~Dakoterrible**


	14. old woman in the woods

Bodies drop one by one to the ground within each second around me. They are like dominoes, triggered by the previous person and falling immediately after them, and the cycle repeats. It seems as though everyone is on the list but hasn't been taken yet because it is still not their turn. Which brings the grand question into my head: why, since I am surrounded by all of this death, am I not among the earliest fallen soldiers? What have I done to merit survival up to this point?

I suppose it has something to do with not being complacent with my circumstances. I have not waited for the bullets to strike me, rather been constantly vigilant and aware of my surroundings. I allowed nothing to go by me unnoticed, except for that one unfortunate explosion that I couldn't have avoided anyway.

But now I warrant my own brief vacation from all the fighting to instead focus on something much more horrific -- the loss of my best friend. I hold him tight in my arms, delivering one last hug before I say goodbye forever. Soon his face will be drained of its usual warmth but suspended in a freeze frame of his youth. I never want to be around a quiet Anatole, even if his silence is a side effect of death. That's just not who he is, and it would hurt too much to see him that way.

Anatole was the one who convinced me to enlist in the army, and now that he's dead, where is my ambition? He was the only person keeping me here, just because I didn't want to abandon my childhood friend and spend my entire life pondering where he could be if he didn't come back home. Why don't I just leave? Actually, that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. I wouldn't be the first one to flee the army, and since I'm so low in the ranks, they wouldn't have any clue whether I died or lived, let alone if I ran off. Since I am already near the edge of the battlefield, it isn't so difficult to slip away without being seen by too many soldiers. I make it out uninjured and embark on my journey with a heavy spirit. I am so fatigued by war.

Even if that was Olivier that I saw on the battlefield, he is probably gone now, lying exactly where I saw him because he wasn't paying attention to what was going on around him to instead watch me. Knowing how brutal that battle was, it is likely that every person I saw will end up on a mastersheet of the dead by the time we're done in Borodino, Olivier included. He has had fortune for his entire life, but on the battlefield, no one is more special than anyone else. Our hearts function the same, no matter rich or poor, and an injury to them is fatal in any case. I shouldn't have to worry about a dead man coming back to find me. I knew, even when he told me that he would return for the first time when he was about to leave for France, that the chances were too low for him to be saying that truthfully. I accepted the prospect, not the promise. Having detached Olivier from my current goals, I continue my trek through the wilderness.

I have only lived in Saint Petersburg and have only stayed there, so I had never seen any other part of Russia in my life before joining the army, but it doesn't mean that I know it well. I have no idea where Borodino is situated on a map, nor Saint Petersburg for that matter, so I am terribly lost. All that is left to do is wander until I find something.

That's exactly what I do, and I'm doing it for over an hour before I stumble across a small cottage with no neighbors anywhere in sight, the perfect place to harbor a soldier.

I approach and knock on the door, and knowing that any common citizen would be freaked out by the blush of blood and dirt drying on my face, I notice the moment when the door opens and immediately say, "Excuse me, madam."

The door was only open for a few seconds, but I glimpsed the woman's face who lives behind it. She's a short lady in simple clothing which includes an apron for cooking. She's obviously old, judging from her wrinkles, but some of those wrinkles are particular to frequent smiling, so I deduce that she must be a kind lady that may let me in eventually and is just spooked by how awful I look, so I plan to persist.

I step closer to the door so that she can hear me. "Please, madame, I am a Russian soldier coming from the town of Borodino, and I need a place to stay. I am not wounded, and I will not steal anything from you, I swear on my honor. All I ask is that you let me in."

A pause lasting several seconds, and within it, a debate from the mind of the lady enclosed within her house. Then cautiously, the door is nudged open, and her wide and fearful eyes behold me from behind it. She utters no words, only nods and further broadens the doorway into her home to invite me inside.

The interior of the house is just as I suspected that it would be -- exactly the same size and material as the exterior. She lives in a wooden cottage, but she has made it her own somehow, cuter and more welcoming. Blankets that I assume she knitted herself lounge over the bend in her sofa and the two chairs beside it. She points to the sofa and to one of the blankets to signal that this is where I will sleep tonight, and I offer a thank you in response, to which she nods again -- it is my guess that she is relatively quiet when she doesn't need to employ the usage of words, but she can communicate clearly enough without them. Maybe she's just scared of me.

The woman procures a cloth from one of her cabinets and dips it in a bucket of water that she has lying around for multiple purposes. Advancing towards me, she suggests with her hands that I sit down in a chair. I comply, and she begins her work of wiping away the paint of our beloved earth and its humans' DNA. With each stroke, I am cleansed from my sins a bit more, but certain burdens still carry with me deeper inside my body. It feels like my mother all over again, back from the dead with a few more years added on that she lost after dying. The woman's touch is gentle, as if she is handling a child. I can't help but wonder if she has a son herself who is on the battlefield right now, fighting until his last breath to not be taken over by the French.

"It's bad out there, isn't it?" she asks, the first words that I have heard her speak, hushed and concerned.

My mind chooses some images to display in my head of the wretched scene, of men dying left and right, of Anatole speaking his last words, of Olivier with that deer in the headlights expression, sheer terror staining the atmosphere a wild color. "Absolutely horrifying."

"You know, you boys are too young to die."

I think back to Anatole and how much potential he had, and nod solemnly.

The woman's cloth finds its way to around my right ear, where she discovers a steady stream of blood dried in place. "Your hearing, my dear, is it alright?"

"There was ringing in my left ear, which has now stopped, but my right ear is completely flat. I can't hear anything from it."

She frowns as she wipes up the rest of the crimson flakes. "It could be worse, I suppose."

That's right. I could be dead on the battlefield with my guts spread out before me with the sole question of "where have my legs gone?" I could be Anatole. But instead, I'm alive and in good care. How did I get so lucky, and why should I be? I fear that this question will haunt me to the end of my days.

**~~~~~**

**A/N: i like this woman**

**this was kind of an easy chapter to write and it's surprisingly long for how little happens**

**~Duckota**


	15. rek,,t

The scene transpired ever so abruptly. One minute my arm was still intact -- I had never broken it, never dislocated it or sprained it, never did anything to injure it besides acquiring a few cuts and bruises over the years -- and the next minute, my arm cradled a bullet within it, with the bullet hole acting as a skylight above its crib. I don't think I even noticed the bullet as it flew inside me. It was only after I experienced a concentration of heat in my upper limb contrasting with the chilly Russian weather that I looked down at my skin to find that it had been breached. The strange thing is that it didn't even hurt. I was completely calm when I saw it, despite the abnormal amount of blood filtering out of my body. After a too long period of staring at my wound and not thinking anything of it, I reminded myself that my parents would be furious if I were to be gravely injured or killed, and I fled the battlefield without looking back to glimpse another horror, damning the consequences of being labeled a coward or being discharged not so honorably or being known as the man who ran away from war because he couldn't handle it. My parents should only care if I'm dead, and I know that they would care a lot more if their reputation were ruined, but my life isn't about my parents anymore. I'm an adult with control over myself. When I return to Saint Petersburg like I promised, I can find Alexei, and we can move in together without my parents to hover around us disapproving of him. We can create a new life for ourselves, one without restraints. That's what I truly want, but that desire will not come to me if I risk my chances fighting in a battle whose outcome I am not very enthusiastic about.

I have walked several kilometers in a terrain with which I am not familiar at all, but anywhere from the fighting is perfect for me. About an hour into my trek through who knows where, a small cottage appears in my line of sight. Since it is the only trace of human life that I have seen in a while, I decide that it's my best hope for survival. I'm too tired to be wandering around in the wilderness any longer, so I draw closer and strike three times upon the wooden door by using the hand that isn't busy tending messily to my wound, and soon a sliver of her home is revealed from behind the door.

"Are you one of those soldiers from the battle in Borodino?" the woman asks before I can even say anything to greet her, and I nod, not wanting to ruin my opportunity to be ushered inside and welcomed. I assume that she has seen one of those aforementioned soldiers from Borodino, and that is why she is not fazed in the slightest by the mess of color spread across my face, nor the way I hold my arm to shove the blood back inside, as if that could work successfully.

The woman invites me inside, pulling the door further back and gesturing with her hand to the room that doubles as a kitchen and a living area -- her house is surprisingly spacious for a random cottage in the middle of nowhere. The woman occupies herself again with washing dishes with the water from a large bucket, chatting with me at the same time. "Another soldier knocked on my door a few hours ago, and I let him in, but he was Russian, not French," she tells me, having picked up on my slight accent. "Alexei is his name."

"Alexei," I repeat, savoring the name on my tongue, the taste bringing back pleasant memories of the boy I love, even if Alexei is a relatively common Russian name and could have been anyone. "I have a friend named Alexei."

"And what is _your_ name?" the woman inquires.

"Olivier Renaud."

"You must be famished, Olivier Renaud. Let me get you some food before you starve to death." The woman opens her cabinets and stands there for a moment, selecting what she could make for me. She giggles a bit, then supplies me with the reason why. "How ironic would it be if you escaped the war to avoid a low chance of survival yet died elsewhere?"

"Sadly ironic," I reply, which earns a small smile from the woman as she turns her back and starts to prepare some food. I take the available opportunity to produce a wad of gauze from my bag and attempt to treat my wound. I have no proper medical supplies besides the gauze, seeing as my position is not that of an army medic, and I know that an infection of the wound is more than likely, but I assure myself that I will make it back to civilization in time to treat it, so I commence my attempt at bandaging myself, but I don't get very far before I am ratted out by the woman's vision.

"I should ask Alexei if he would like anything to eat. I totally forgot to do that when he came, and now he's sleeping in my room, because I figured he should take the comfier bed after sleeping on shabby structures in the military." Happily babbling to me about whatever she would like, the woman turns around with a bowl of fruit in her hands, which she almost drops upon seeing the chaos that is my arm. Her pupils expand to accommodate her growing fear, and with shaking arms, she places the bowl of fruit on the table. "Or maybe I should call Alexei right now to help me fix you up." The woman scurries out of the kitchen and into her bedroom, where the Russian soldier sleeps. It takes some time to wake him from his deep slumber, as he has probably not slept very well and for very long since joining the army and especially not after the battle, which he must have fled early like me.

The woman reappears in the living room, and so does an essential part of my soul. With her stands the fatigued figure of none other than Alexei Kozlov, still entranced by the beauty of sleep. He doesn't notice me until the woman tells him that they have a visitor, and then the sun breaks out from below the earth for the first time in three months.

Alexei sprints towards me and catches me in a firm embrace with his head nestled into my shoulder. "Oh how I've missed you, my love," I whisper into his ear, and he tightens his grip on me as a response, beckoning a stab of pain out of my arm that manifests in a sharp inhale of breath.

"Olivier, what's wrong?" Alexei asks, pulling away from me, eyebrows tightened in confusion and concern.

I can't even be bothered by my injury now that I am reunited with Alexei. I can only smile warmly. "My love..."

"Get him seated back at the table, Alexei," the woman instructs before I can explain as she washes her hands, pointing Alexei over towards her multipurpose bucket of water with a gesture when he has done what he was told first. The woman apparently has designated a whole cabinet to medical supplies, which she scans for the appropriate treatments to my bullet wound. Once she has found what she was looking for, she brings them over and sets them on the table.

"Conveniently for you, I used to be a nurse back in my day," the woman informs me with a wink while unscrewing the lid of the rubbing alcohol.

"So you know if he's going to be alright?" Alexei inquires, so panicked that his leg jitters under the table. It's cute to know that he cares a lot about me, but I don't want him to have a heart attack by being so distressed over my safety.

"He'll be just fine, sweetie."

Alexei nods, only a tiny bit consoled, so I grasp his hand to support him. I should technically be the one who needs their hand to be held, considering I'm the one who is about to be in a whole lot of pain in addition to the fear of dying, but I am surprisingly relaxed. That might change when my nerves are assailed by a procedure, though.

"I understand that we just met and that this may seem a bit forward, but you're going to need to take your shirt off so that I can clearly see the wound."

I silently unbutton my top coat, then my main covering, and finally my simple cloth undershirt after I untuck it from my pants and slide the suspenders off of my shoulders, and the woman starts on her work once all is done. The first step is to take a small cloth and wipe away the blood around the bullet hole, then to add some disinfecting alcohol for the actual wound and the supplies that she will be using for the procedure. The stinging rooted within my skin draws a wince out of me, to which Alexei responds by grabbing my hand again.

"I'm not going to amputate, but I _am_ going to be retrieving the bullet from your arm, as there is no exit wound. This is going to hurt like hell, but it would hurt a lot more if I didn't have drinking alcohol for you." The woman pulls out a bottle of whiskey that she keeps only for medical purposes as implied by how little has been used of it. She pours me enough whiskey to act as a makeshift anaesthesia, and I reluctantly force it down my throat. The French are known for their obsession with wine, so I have never tasted hard alcohol like whiskey or vodka, and it comes as a shock to me to taste such a flavor. I only drink it so that I will be spared some torment down the road.

Positioning the tweezers in her hand, the woman explains, "You were hit from far enough away that the bullet is somewhat close to the surface of your skin, so fortunately for you, I can get it out easier." I prepare myself for agony as the tweezers float closer and closer, and eventually they touch my tender skin and dive inside. She has already located the bullet, but fitting it within the tweezers and pulling it out is the difficult part. In order to get ahold of the bullet, the woman has to make a bit of extra room in the bullet canal, entailing pressure against my inner workings. She works as quickly as she can so as to not stretch out my suffering for longer than it needs to be stretched out, but wincing and whimpering are still fit into the schedule. Alexei looks away from the sight, but little does he know that he is solving a percentage of my pain by maintaining contact with me. The woman soon extracts the bloody bullet and disposes of it on the table, where it clatters and leaves tiny footprints of my DNA. Once more, she cleans the wound with alcohol and includes water this time. Finally, that step is over and done with, but the woman introduces another.

"Next comes stitches to seal up the wound." The woman starts right away with threading the needle, and in a matter of seconds, it plunges into the skin surrounding where the bullet entered my body. Her hands are steady despite her old age, and it soothes me to know that she is familiar with what she is doing, even if she hasn't been actively working in her field recently. I need not expect a slip or any other type of mistake.

The procedure comes along relatively quickly, and by the time she's finished stitching up my injury, it looks as though a I experienced a wound of a lesser proportion. She wraps up my treatment by asking Alexei to hold a cotton strip to the affected area as she winds the sections of my gauze that are still intact around my arm, and just like that, I am repaired.

"I thank you very kindly for your services," I say to the woman who may have just led me to survival, and she smiles and nods once, forever a benevolent figure who has given all that she can to two soldiers that she just met a few hours ago.

"Since there are two of you now, you and Alexei can take my bed, as it's bigger, and I'm sure neither of you would enjoy sleeping with me over each other."

"Oh, are you sure that you're okay with this? You've already done so much, and I don't want to impose on your good night's sleep."

"I'm absolutely sure," the woman clarifies, shooing us towards her bedroom. "Go on now -- get some rest. After that traumatic experience, you need it." 

**~~~~~**

**A/N: THE BOYS ARE BACK, THE BOYS ARE BACK**

**i hope y'all are happy ;)))**

**~Darkota**


	16. the hot gossip

[Music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fgVYKKTCuh8)

"Tell me, Alexei -- why, after hearing that I was being shipped off to die, did you decide to do the same thing to yourself, only willingly in your case?"

This is not exactly what I would deem a nice conversation to be having as we're trying to drift off to sleep after a day of brutal fighting and reuniting with the person we have been missing for three months, but Olivier is choosing to have it, for whatever reason. I understand that he must have had pressing questions that have haunted him throughout his time away from me in the military, but this isn't the time to ask them. Maybe in the morning.

"I didn't want to sit around mourning my loss, and I figured it would be a better and more ethical source of food," I answer, hoping that this is the end of the train of thought and that I can resume my attempt to fall asleep, but it isn't over yet. Olivier has more to discuss, more to argue about.

"You know how much Lourdes loves you and how much she would be happy to give you everything that you need."

His argument is weak, and I don't want to have to deal with it, so I give my reasoning the short and simple way. "I don't speak French, and Anatole suggested the idea first anyway, but I weighed the pros and cons and was quickly in agreement. I didn't want to leave him either."

"What ever happened to Anatole?" Olivier inquires, and that's when the discussion becomes more personal for me; that's when I start to engage myself.

"He was shot, and he died earlier today, and I held him while he passed," I respond, saying so little so that I can spare myself the details.

Olivier is instantly wounded in an emotional sense -- I figure he has enough physical wounds for today -- even though he didn't even know Anatole. "Oh god, I'm so sorry to hear that."

I throw my mind back to the day in the cemetery when I told Olivier how Anatole felt about him, and I realize that Olivier can't be too distraught over his death. "It's not like you were so fond of him in the first place anyway, and if you were truly sorry, you wouldn't have shot him."

I didn't ponder it in the moment, because my attention had to be solely on Anatole, as I didn't have much time left with him, and I wanted to properly say goodbye while I still had the chance. But now that I look at it closely, I realize that curly blond hair and sapphire eyes sounds a lot like a French soldier that I know very well, and it could have likely been Olivier who killed my best childhood friend.

Olivier shifts in bed, his emotions disturbed by the thread that I have opened up all of the sudden. "Alexei, what are you talking about?" he inquires cautiously.

I capture a deep breath in my lungs and debate whether or not I should tell him, but I am soon cognizant of the fact that he will be pondering it all night if I don't, so I hope that this puts him out of his misery, although it will probably put him into another type. "Anatole gave me a description of the soldier who shot him, and it sounded a lot like you."

I cannot clearly see Olivier's face in the darkness, but I can deduce that it is stricken with realization. He buries his head in his pillow to escape the world that propelled him towards murdering an innocent man. "Fucking hell, Alexei," he mumbles through the muffler of cloth and cushion.

"I'm sorry to have sprung that on you as you're trying to get some sleep and while you have a bunch of other burdens to carry on your back. Honestly, you shouldn't worry too much about it. The world is a bitch, not necessarily the people who are shoved unwillingly into it."

"I thought he was your best friend, though," Olivier protests, as if he _wants_ to suffer more. "How can you just let me get away with his murder like that?"

"Because you've stressed over too much in your short lifetime. Yes, I am upset that Anatole is dead, but how could you have known that it was him? You had never seen him before until you came face to face with him as an enemy on the battlefield. You were doing what you had been told to do."

I sound too nonchalant about my best friend's death, and Olivier is perturbed by that. He wants me to feel like I can never forgive him, or at least it appears that way. "But I _killed_ a man. I did exactly what I swore to never do. I swore to never succumb to the power of war, but I did. Doesn't that mean something to you?"

"Olivier, I know what I said."

He is silent now, as he has not found another path to follow in the conversation. I gave him a dead end. "Can we change the subject at least?"

"Sure." Not having anything to discuss, silence hangs in the room for a few moments before I decide to ask Olivier about how the military had been treating him while I was away.

"It was one of the worst experiences in my life," Olivier confesses, not even attempting to sugarcoat it or push out his verdict piece by piece so that one could swallow it. "Not only did I ache often due to the extreme workouts, but I also witnessed the atrocities of war that always appear in my intellectual debates but that I have never seen with my own vision. I have no idea how anyone could ever erase that from their mind."

Just as I expected. This rich boy has lived a life where he could have whatever he wanted, so stepping into a world where nothing makes sense and where everything is on the market for devastation must be the most bizarre and horrifying experience ever to him. I was already accustomed to the meager servings of food, but Olivier was not. The French troops were starving due to the Cossacks that came and burned their own crops, and that is where Olivier tasted his first drop of what it is like to have a hollow stomach craving something to furnish it.

"The worst part for me at first was having to listen to the disgusting pollution called nationalism clogging my ears, but now that I've unofficially dropped out of the army and have lost my hearing in my right ear, that's not as much of a problem anymore. Then when I stepped onto the battlefield of Borodino, I glimpsed the sheer terror of the soldiers and the inner workings of their souls, and that really opened my perspective. I always talk about how much I hate war, but I finally experienced it for myself, and now I truly understand why I despise it so much."

"And that's exactly why we continue to resist it," Olivier emphasizes, his words centered in the conversation but his fingers brushing my ear after having heard the brief mention of my hearing loss.

My eyes shut lightly, I curl into his touch. "I thought I would never see you again."

Finding Olivier after a few months of being gone from him without a single word feels like the sky has opened up again to deliver light from the heavens, and I am bathing in the luminous rays. I spent those whole three months pondering the chance of if Olivier would be alive or if he would be dead, and it was such a struggle to keep it with me for so long. My heart was fragile and trembling before now. My mind received no reprieve from itself. But with Olivier, my soul soars freely, no longer plagued by worry. Olivier and I are safe and together. There is no need to suffer anymore.

"I promised you when I left for the army that we would reunite at some point." His brows scrunch together like curtains being drawn, "Don't you remember?"

Suddenly placed into shyness because of how let down Olivier sounds, I quietly admit, "Yeah, but I didn't entirely believe you. You're well aware that I'm not stupid. I could evaluate the probability of a soldier returning from the military when there's so much tension in the air, and it wasn't looking all too perpetually favorable for the both of us."

"Well I'm here with you now, so put a little more faith in me next time. The world is full of unexpected miracles."

Out of everyone, Olivier and I know the most that this is true. Olivier learned Russian against his parents' will and could then communicate with everyone, no matter what class, when he arrived in Russia, and that is how we were able to meet each other. What are the odds that a French noble can speak Russian instead of the other way around? That was our first miracle. Our most recent miracle is that we found each other. Every decision, even decisions that weren't ours, has led up to this moment. We both fled the battlefield of Borodino, walked in the same direction for the same amount of time, and showed up at the same cottage in time to meet each other there. The universe aligned in just the right proportions. I wonder what would happen if everything were not so.

"So where do we go from here now that we've found each other again?" I investigate. We have closed off an old chapter of our lives, but now I have no idea how we should proceed with a new one -- no matter which way we do it, I am dreaming of abundant conviviality in it.

"Well the summer isn't quite over yet. We have until the end of September, and currently we are at the beginning of the month. We can finish the summer in Saint Petersburg, and afterwards, the path that we take is up to us and only us."

Comprehending how much Olivier's optimism could be blocking his judgment, I try to bring him back to the reality of his situation. "What about your parents?"

"Don't concern yourself with what my parents want," he instructs me, waving off my silly notion. "This new life is about us and only us. So with that in mind, where do you propose that we go after our time in Saint Petersburg is up? We could stay if you like, of course, but we could also go wherever you wish to go."

"Hell no," I counter. "I've lived in Saint Petersburg for all my life. I want to leave and explore a little. There's so much to see in the world, so much that I have not yet seen, and I want to see it with _you_ , Olivier."

I imagine the scene that he is offering to me, and I don't even have to worry about it being realistic, because I know that it can be as long as I'm with Olivier. I imagine waking up in the morning with him right beside me, the sun ushered in by dawn captured in his hair, his body posed in sleep yet with so much beauty that it seems as though his pose is intentional. I imagine every little glance that we will throw at each other in secret, smiling sheepishly when we are caught. I imagine the comforting touch of his leg under the table, of his hand as we walk, of each accidental stroke of contact that means just as much as a deliberate one. I imagine laughing until my body aches at jokes that sometimes aren't even funny. I imagine never having to worry about being fed, where there is always enough, because my old life of near starvation will have been left behind me in the dust. I imagine settling down to sleep at the end of a long day like we are now, with his soft voice ringing in the one ear that still works to wish me a good night. I imagine being nothing but content with him. I imagine being happy.

"And you will," he promises, a promise that I am _certain_ that he is going to keep. "I will make sure of it."

"I'm so ready to leave this hell zone and be with you for the rest of my days, Olivier Renaud."

My life has never been very fortunate or marked by joy. My parents died from disease one after the other, and I led my sister to her death and had to carry the burden with me for the entire time after that. I lived on the harsh streets before joining the army and being thrown into the warzone of where human souls struggle the most. Life has not been very kind to me. But with Olivier, I can do anything that I have ever dreamed of doing. Everything is possible with him. I can leave Saint Petersburg and start a new life, one that isn't so cruel. Magic would abound.

Olivier offers no words, only smooths back my hair, but that is enough to show me that he cares. "You should get some sleep. It's late," he reminds me with a loving kiss on the top of my head. "Good night, my love."

**~~~~~**

**A/N: Y'ALL I'M FUCKING CRYING**

**usually I'm the one who makes everyone else cry, but now I got myself too**

**~Dakotini**


	17. fucc

The entire portion of yesterday after I was shot was spent with discontentment and the slightest amount of pain once the informal operation, which included a larger amount of pain, was done on my arm. The night cured my agony significantly, and in the morning my soul feels a lot lighter, especially since I am with Alexei after three months of absence from him. I now carry the prospect of our new life that we discussed last night, too, and I can't wait to leave and start it.

The plan is to return to Saint Petersburg for the rest of the summer but stop in Moscow on the way to check in with civilization again and to hop on a train towards our desired destination, where my parents and Lourdes will still be. I don't know how far the army is behind us, but I am guessing that Borodino is still going on about an hour away from the small cottage in the middle of the woods where we are currently hiding out, so we should make it to Moscow in time to catch the train before the French army advances to take it over. The city will be panicked, but the trains will probably still work.

Because of our unignorable excitement and the fact that time is of the essence with the French army on our tails, we have decided to depart from the cottage today and immediately commence our travel. We have asked the woman for a map to take with us so that we don't get lost in the vast country that is Russia. I thought at first that she wouldn't have any need of one and therefore wouldn't have one at all, but apparently not. She is very well stocked with useful items, it appears. We take a few minutes to survey the map, and realize that we are north of Borodino, and that we need to make a diagonal line towards Moscow from where we are at the current moment. Then we are prepared to walk.

We thank the woman for all that she has done for us, and after all of our goodbyes have been voiced, we exit the cottage and begin our journey back home. We walk at a steady pace without looking at the map until Alexei suggests that we do so in order to refresh our memory of which route we are supposed to follow. We stop walking for a few minutes to discuss where we should go, and that is where the recent past catches up with us. That is where our plan falls to pieces.

"Is that you, Renaud?" a voice calls from a distance as it slowly advances towards us, a voice that I know isn't Alexei's.

I spin on my heel only to see none other than Gauthier, the person I used to advise and who thought of me as a friend, staring at me bitterly as a group of army men stand behind him, waiting for further orders. "What are you doing here, Gauthier?" I ask cautiously. My vision darts quickly to Alexei, who understands nothing of what is being said but is starting to tremble with fear anyway. He is the odd man out here. Even if Gauthier is angry with me, my life is not definitely on the line, while Alexei's is.

"I'm leading a hunt for food before we advance to Moscow. Our soldiers are starving, especially after a long day of fighting, which you obviously missed." His voice reeks of contempt, not even disappointment. Eyes then turning away from me and towards my companion, Gauthier takes a thoughtful survey of Alexei's Russian army clothes, a dead giveaway, with disgust as the background expression. "You left the fighting at Borodino -- fighting that is crucial to your home country, might I add -- to instead have a little vacation with this Russian scum?" When I don't answer, my vision adhered to the ground, he continues anyway. "If so, I'm here to tell you that your vacation with him is up." Gauthier approaches towards Alexei and shoves him to the earth. When Alexei scrambles to rise to his feet again, Gauthier pushes him down once more, and this time his hands skid farther into the rough floor of the wilderness.

"Olivier, what's going on?" Alexei asks as he looks up at me, now worried about Gauthier's intentions.

"Alexei, my love, for your safety please don't move."

I hate to leave him on the ground while he has no idea what's happening around him, but there is no time for me to translate. This is the heat of the moment, and I can't miss one thing. If I speak Russian, a language that Gauthier can't understand, for too long, he will suspect that I am conniving with Alexei and forming a plan. For the security of the both of us, I cannot answer any further questions from Alexei.

"Shoot him," Gauthier orders.

And this is where the entire situation becomes a lot more real. Gauthier is a man who jokes around a lot, but he is dead serious right now. All of those other times could be solemn if only he could spare this one occasion where it is imperative that he is not actually going to make me shoot my beloved Alexei.

We both just escaped war, the place where death is the most prevalent, and we assumed that we were safe because of what we did. Surely the chances of our dying should be higher in a situation where it is _typically_ higher, not in a situation where there should be no peril, and if there _is_ any peril, then it should only be due to the environment, not to due to other humans forcing people to shoot the one they love. I promised Alexei that we would start a new life together, one of inexhaustible splendor where we wouldn't have to concern ourselves with the atrocities we have witnessed on the battlefield. I kept my last promise despite the odds, so why can't I keep this one? Why is it that when Alexei finally has a chance to be happy, that chance is stolen away from him as quickly as it came?

I don't know how I will resist Gauthier, but it is crucial that I do. Alexei's life is on the line here.

"And what if I _don't_ shoot him? What happens _then_?"

"What happens then is that I'll shoot you both and ensure that it's the most agonizing experience of both of your lives."

So this is where I make the pivotal decision.

The group of soldiers behind Gauthier just watches silently in anticipation. I cannot tell where their loyalties lie -- whether they are sympathetic for Alexei or if they are rooting for Gauthier. Either way, none of them intervene. None of them care enough. To them, this is just free entertainment that they themselves would rather not get involved in.

"Olivier, please! Tell me what he's about to do!"

"I don't have a gun," I protest, stalling for time in order to avoid actually shooting the person I love.

"Then allow me to assist you," Gauthier offers, retrieving a gun from one of his soldiers who still watch in silence, then giving it to me with a sneer. "It's no problem, really."

"You know I don't speak French, Olivier!"Alexei screams from the background, his voice jagged with physical irritation. "You said you would translate for me! Why aren't you fucking translating?"

I have to ignore him. I have to pretend like I cannot speak Russian or whatever the excuse, even though Gauthier has heard me do it from just now and from the times when I've translated documents for the army. Anything to keep Gauthier unsuspicious. Anything to keep Alexei awake and breathing.

I look Gauthier straight in the eyes, while mine produce bountiful tears. "I'm your advisor, Gauthier. Why are you making me do this?"

I thought he considered me a friend. Even though I kept my distance, he never noticed it, and he was always favorable of me before now. Why would you put a friend in this position? Why should he care this much if Alexei is an enemy of France if he can see how much distress it is causing me to kill him?

"Fight back, Olivier!" Alexei commands me, but I can do nothing for him or else risk more than I could gain. From _his_ perspective, it must seem that I'm being complacent with my circumstances, but this is not complacence. This is accepting the fact that there is nowhere else to run.

"This man is an enemy of France." Upon realizing that enemies of France do not count as my own enemies, Gauthier forms a gesture of disapproval with his head. "Sometimes I think you're _too_ smart, and that's an issue for us. You've started to form your own opinions, and with opinions comes defiance. That's not the kind of soldier we trained you to be, Renaud. You need to be taught a lesson for stepping out of line."

"Please, Gauthier," I beg, searching for a bargain to make. I'm frantic and will take anything at this point. "I'll continue to help you with your letters to that woman you love, or, or..."

"You have already proven yourself to be worthless to the nation of France. I am in no need of your services now." Gauthier taps the gun that I've allowed to fall limp in my hands to remind me of he wants me to do. "Now shoot him, Renaud." I do not comply, and Gauthier's next option is to shout, "I said _shoot him_!"

"No," I state plainly. This is as far as I go with my defiance, but it does not hold up for longer than it takes for me to say the two letter word.

Gauthier takes ahold of me physically, thrusting the gun into an upright stance with the aim required to fire a bullet directly into Alexei's brain and possibly whiz out the other side. He stands behind me, steadying my shuddering hands so that he can get a clear shot.

With tear-riddled cheeks and sorrowful eyes, Alexei shakes his head slowly back and forth in disbelief. He now knows what is coming, for the language of war is universal. And through every fear of death that he previously kept, he only has one request. "Don't let me die like this, Olivier."

But this is a request that I cannot fulfill.

Since I myself will not do it, Gauthier performs his last check of the gun's stability, ushers my finger to the trigger, places his own finger on top of mine, and fires a bullet from its tip. And within a matter of milliseconds, the boy who used to be so full of life has now been robbed of that life.

Alexei, formerly on his knees as if praying to me to help him, falls back onto the carpet of the forest. A deposits of the crimson river flowing out of the center of his forehead stain the leaves around him a vibrant hue, and from now on they will forever be marked by the blood of an innocent boy who was far too young to die. Alexei's pulse arrests itself into stillness. The oxygen in his lungs freezes in place as the accordion of his body plays its final melancholy note. It echoes solemnly in the hollow woods, but I am the only one who can hear it. It moves me to tears.

But I don't even say one word. All I can manage to do is stand there in shock, my feet deeply rooted into the ground as I stare -- just _stare_ \-- at the corpse lying there motionless in front of me. I don't even think, either. My mind does a strange thing where nothing filters in or out, where everything is frozen. The only thing that could tell other humans whether I'm dead or alive is my breathing, somehow steady among the chaos, and my heartbeat pulsating languidly in my chest, phenomena that I myself am not even aware of as well.

"That took longer than it should have." Gauthier seizes his gun from me to return it to the soldier from whom he took it originally, and signals for the army to continue its march through the woods. "Consider yourself discharged from the military," he says to me. "That's what you wanted anyway."

His army marches past me nonchalantly as if Alexei was just another piece of business they had to take care of, while the majority of them give me dirty looks as they do so. Soldiers who I have never seen before in my life suddenly feel as though they have the right to judge me. I wish I could tell them off for being such hypocritical fools, but I cannot open my mouth to say any words, only to generate sobbing sounds to accompany my tears. After a while, I become fed up and elect to say something to them to get them to fuck off with their hypocrisy. "Et quoi? Vous êtes saints, vous?" A few of them look away, pretending like they weren't looking in the first place, just now becoming ashamed of their condemnation. Soon the entire army slips past me, and I am the only living soul in this part of the woods.

I don't know what to do now that I am all alone here. Do I weep over Alexei's dead body like any normal person would? Do I immediately begin to repress my emotions? Do I blame myself for it? Where do I go from this point in terms of dealing with Alexei's death? The truth is, I don't have a goddamn clue, yet the thing I want to know the most does not have to do with myself.

Life has never been very kind to Alexei Kozlov. And I am just wondering _why_. Alexei has never done anything to deserve the kind of treatment that the universe provided him with. He is a benevolent soul, and his mind is an endless library of intellect growing by the day. He understands what no one else that I have ever met understands. He steals bread yet berates himself for it because of the ethics upon which he is so fixated, which means that he values being an honest person as long as he is living enough to be that way. He is brave in a manner in which I have never seen it displayed before. Each day, he wakes up ready to do something great, not wallow in his self pity like some other people in his situation might do. He has made me feel like I don't have to be confined to the singular life set out for me before I was even born. He has made me feel alive as he is not.

I am a very fortunate man to have known him, but he left too early for my liking. We were planning on spending the rest of our lives with each other, and for him he accomplished his desire, but I let down my end of the deal.

It pains me immensely to behold the cadaver of the man that I killed, of the man that I love, of the man who no longer can love me back, but I need to say something to him before I leave. It is released as a tearful whisper, but I mean it with the same strength as if I shouted it from a mountaintop. "Forgive me, my love."

I resume my walk to Moscow. **  
**

**~~~~~**

**A/N: get fucked!!!!!**

**this took me too long to write bc I kept getting distracted but it's here now (although I'm guessing y'all wish it weren't)**

**~Dakotevil**

 


	18. this is uncomfy

As soon as I returned back to Saint Petersburg with the intention of staying there until the end of the October, I found that my family was packing their things for France. They told me that the tension between France and Russia was too dangerous, and that staying in a country that we're at war with would not be such a great idea. I had no chance to say goodbye to all the places I discovered with Alexei by my side, not even by looking through the windows of the coach towards the train station, as they were shielded by black curtains for protection or whatever word my father used. There was no room for sentimentality. My family pretended as though Russia was an abuser from which we were only trying to escape to benefit our own security, and they shot down any words from me attempting to convince them that war does not change the makeup of the landscape or of the general population. Thus we returned to our home in Paris, but it felt too artificial without Alexei there. I have made few memories in Paris, while I feel as though my entire life led up to what I experienced in Saint Petersburg. Now that I am gone from where my soul exploded into color, existing is a dull activity of bleak greys.

My parents were obviously curious as to why I was back from the army so soon when they knew for a fact that Napoleon hadn't quit yet, and I was forced to reveal the partial truth that I left out of my own volition to get help for a wound because I knew that my parents would be furious if I were to show up on a list of the dead or come back to them with a serious injury. I didn't mention, however, what propelled me to flee from Borodino instead of towards the medics specifically there for the military, or just continue fighting. They didn't ask, though I could tell that they were a bit suspicious anyway. Lourdes above all was just relieved that I came back in one piece and that my only injury was a minor one -- while I didn't give a single shit about my parents, I missed Lourdes dearly, even if Alexei was the primary topic on my mind. I worried less about my sister because I knew that her fate was sealed as a safe one, and that she would be with my parents in a secure part of civilization.

Back in France, I have become an outcast. I am no longer known as the polite and charming son of Monsieur and Madame Renaud. I am no longer known as someone worthy of standing on the same level as any stranger I see on the street. I am no longer even known as Olivier, for no one bothers to learn my name. They only stick around long enough to insult me for crimes that they do not understand at all.

When I attend those monotonous balls with my family, no one is interested in my time in the military. What I expected from the news that I would be joining the army is that our noble acquaintances would swarm me with questions about it, but now that I've been consorting with the enemy, they couldn't care less about what I have to say. As far as they know, there is no explanation to be shared, so they encourage my silence with dirty expressions thrown my way. The only time that they are interested in me is when they approach my father and whisper about how unfortunate it is that I am their son. Sometimes they don't even have the courtesy to try and whisper what they have to say. I am aware that my father is utterly ashamed with me and how I've affected the reputation of this fine family, but there's nothing I can do about it. I don't let it get to me anyway. I have never owed him anything, not even a perfect record to maintain a superb social standing.

But sometimes I feel ashamed of myself, too. I fought so hard for a love that I then stole away with a slight implementation of pressure on the trigger of a gun, so easily taken. I betrayed my country for a boy that now rots alone in the middle of an unidentifiable forest somewhere that I don't even remember, a few thousand kilometers away from here. I flew too close to the sun and then drowned myself in the sea almost on purpose. I am labeled a coward by people that I have never met, and I was willing to overlook that minor detail as long as I would be with Alexei, but now he's not even here, and the torment continues anyway. I am insulted with nothing to show for why I risked it.

Maybe it would have all worked out better if I had just waited it out, even if the chance of death was higher on the battlefield of Borodino. Maybe I could've survived and made it home to Alexei, and _he_ would be the only one who would have to flee, but his name wouldn't be circling around Russia like mine is in France, because his social standing is drastically different from mine. No one would remember his name, which I would usually find horribly unfair because of how it overlooks all of his remarkable qualities, but now I realize that no one would remember his fleeing along with it. The universe aligned to bring us together at the old woman's cottage in the woods, where we rejoiced for the first time in three months. We were convinced that the universe had finally worked out in our favor, but maybe the universe shouldn't have brought us together. It may have worked out better if it hadn't.

This is apparently a typical stage of grief -- pondering what I did wrong and pondering what could have fixed it, forever persuaded that it would be better if only I had done something differently, never accepting that maybe there was no way to divert the predetermined course of events. I should know that this way of thinking is incredibly unhealthy, especially when I'm struggling to get over my grief, but it is a natural part mourning, and my mental will isn't going to magically remove these negative thoughts from my head. I should give myself time to recover while still telling myself not to dive so deep with my conspiracies about what the universe screwed up.

Quite frankly, I have no clue how to return to what my life was like before I met Alexei Kozlov that one evening in the Saint Petersburg streets. The universe aligned for us there -- this is certain -- but it seems that it was only there. The universe did not align for us in other situations, instead aligned then for our demise. I have to live in this demise now, but I don't know how to carry on with it, how to escape it. I just want to be happy -- that's all I've ever wanted in fact. I really do. But I don't know how, and it's killing me.

Lourdes doesn't know how, either. I am cognizant that all she wants to do is help me, but there is no way for her to truly understand what I'm going through, what I've already seen. She has never been to war, has never been forced to kill her best friend, has never woken up sweating from a nightmare with tears already descending her cheeks, has never had to deal with the guilt and haunting memories of what she has done. These kinds of things are hard to explain and hard to replicate. Lourdes is trying her very best to guide me through this, which I appreciate beyond words, but there is only so much that she can do, and sadly it isn't enough. She is terribly concerned about me as well. She attempts to hide it, but I can see right through her, and I know that she is crumbling inside, too. She hates to see her dear brother like this, and I hate that she has to. If only I could put on a brave face for Lourdes to keep her in the same joyful spirit that she is usually in. But it won't work, because she already knows.

The day she asked about Alexei was the most difficult day to appreciate her eternal presence. Her assumption was that he had stayed behind in Saint Petersburg and that we were perfectly content with the long distance, agreeing to send each other frequent letters to keep in touch. How perfect that would be in comparison to how things actually played out. I wish I hadn't told her the truth, but eventually it would come spilling out anyway. I shared with her the tale of what had transpired from the day I left him to join the army, to the day we found each other in the old woman's cottage, to the next day when I was required to give him up as nothing more than Russian scum, as an enemy of France. It was at this point that she understood why I was acting the way that I was and still am, and many tears fell. Oh how she adored Alexei, even without saying a single word to him or receiving a single word _from_ him. Her agony placed inside me the pain of all the bullet wounds that I missed by fleeing from the battlefield.

This is how war tears a human apart. I have been stripped of my dignity, of my freedom, of my clear mental state, and all that is left is a shell of a man that used to be so confident but that now cannot taste even one droplet of liberation from my burdens. I am no longer sure of anything about my life. I cannot see the world accurately, as if the war abducted the color from my eyes. I have no prospects, no ambitions. I spend my days by the window of my bedroom, thinking yet not thinking at all. If I had any sense of self before, it has now departed and allotted me the dire question of "where has it gone?" but not enough energy to actually do anything about answering it. By forcing me to enlist in the army, I have lost everything that makes me who I am, and there is no way to find it again. Is this the legacy that my father wanted me to carry on?

**~~~~~**

**A/N: damn what a chapter amirite**

**very introspective if I do say so myself**

**but we're not over yet, my dudes**

**~Dakotake-me-to-church**


	19. talk shit get hit

Julie shifts around on the bed, finding a position that is more pleasing to sit in, and she draws in a deep breath. Her vision is towards her lap for the moment, her mouth partially open for a few seconds before beginning. “Olivier, mon chéri, you really need to stop thinking about this whole war thing that’s been stuck in your head for so long.” Julie beholds me with eyes that to anyone else would seem caring, but all I see in them is pity. There is no empathy for my situation in Julie’s set of emotions. She only retains the ideology of “wow, what a poor boy,” an ideology that I have no need of. She has no intention of helping me work through my struggles, and I have no intention of marrying her or even considering liking her.

My parents, deciding that I need a break from all of my depressive thoughts and from my trauma, have also decided to invite Julie over to the house. They say it’s to help me feel better and more connected to the world, but I know they’re just doing it so that I might become more acquainted with Julie and actually start to not hate her. Being from a noble family, my parents are worried about how their social reputation will be affected by my solitude. The early twenties are a good age to start considering a suitor and then marrying them, and since I am of that age, my parents are becoming more and more desperate for me to spark an interest in Julie. I don’t know why they don’t just move on to someone else besides Julie, as it is clearly not working out between us. Maybe they just don’t know it, and think that we are going steady. But after what she said about Alexei at the ball in Saint Petersburg, my forgiveness of her actions is far from my to-do list. I can usually manage to sit with her long enough to appease my parents, but it is becoming harder and harder to tolerate her.

“And how do you propose that I just simply forget all of the horrors that I’ve seen?” I challenge her, but she does not accept my challenge, only continues to spew out that same ridiculous bullshit that she’s been spewing out for years. She _is_ a noble, after all.

“I think you’re being a tad dramatic, love,” Julie counters, stroking my arm with that same pitying expression that is as thick and disgusting as her makeup.

“You have not seen what I have seen.” Done with everything that Julie has to offer, I rise from the bed and storm out of the room. I don’t even give a shit that this is my house and that she is now alone in _my_ bedroom, because I am sorting through too much animosity to care. I don’t want to see her repulsive face any longer. I have to get out of the house, no matter the consequences of what lies beyond our doors.

The streets are a danger for me because of the people who roam them. The little children who have no filter will explicitly ask their parents if I am the man who ran away from the battlefield of Borodino, and their parents will hush them to avoid provoking me or making a scene or being seen as impolite. The teenagers and young adults will size me up with their friends, watching me with sneers as they report to their buddies all of the violent things that they would like to do to me. Other teenager and young adults will shout at me to make themselves feel important. I find that it’s best to ignore them. The adults won’t actually say anything to me, but they will look at me for longer than what is considered polite, then they will whisper to the person next to them while they continue to look, or look back and forth between me and their companion. It feels icky to be the talk of the town and to be recognized wherever I go, to have everyone’s eyes on me at all times. I have no peace in France, but it’s not like I can return to Russia with my identity as a Frenchman, let alone a former French soldier.

I have been ignoring these imbeciles for the entire time that I’ve been back in France, so one more day doesn’t hurt me. Besides, it’s better to be taunted on the streets to be told that my experience is invalid by an idiotic girl who knows nothing of war, by a girl who has never stepped outside of elite civilization, by a girl who has always been entitled to what she wants. I will risk the streets if it means that I don’t have to risk Julie. I don’t expect the conditions out here to be perfect, but I _do_ expect them to be better than what I have left inside my house.

Obviously they are far from perfect, which I understand once again, two minutes away from the house, as I am approached by a gang of boys around my age who clearly want to start some shit with me. I don’t pay them any mind before they speak.

“You’re Olivier Renaud, non?” one of the boys asks. His face is a nasty one, stretched into a sneer as if he has any sort of authority over me. This is the same type of boy that would be killed in an instant on the battlefield, his last thought one of hatred for his enemy, still convinced, even after he’s been ushered to death by them, that he can beat them. He appears to be the leader of the group, and he’s definitely the one with the most guts, judging from the way that he approached me on the street despite having only met me with a layer of falsity through the twisted gossip spiraling all around his ears.

“Oui, that would be me,” I answer.

I prepare myself for trouble, but I don’t jump to anger yet. I let these boys play out their little fantasies in their heads. How glorious it feels to be naive like them. I can distinctly remember those days when war had not yet hardened my soul into stone.

None of the boys provide me with their names, so I subtly push the demand. “Am I going to becoming acquainted with you lot, or do you prefer to remain anonymous just in case you don’t actually have as much power as you think you do?”

The boy looks to the side, smiling to himself for a moment as a slight acknowledgement of how my comment affected him, then shifting his head back towards me. “You’re tough, aren’t you?” A slight chuckle, sarcastic. “Though I guess not tough enough to not abandon your country in the military.”

My emotional state regarding anger is at an interesting point right now. Julie pulled me over the line from calmness to anger, and now these boys are pulling me so far through the anger spectrum that I have reverted back to calmness again. I do not yell at them, only speak in a level tone. I’m sure they would feed off of my anger if I showed it anyway. My goal is not to fight with them. My goal is to set them straight. I hope they learn something from it.

My face slightly moving only to talk, I deliver a piece of information that these boys need to grasp. “You evidently haven’t experienced the military, because if you had, your attitude would’ve gotten you killed, and unfortunately you’re still here living, so tell me” -- I set my jaw tight for an instant, then unlock it to speak -- “what makes you think that you have the right to judge what you do not comprehend, what you _cannot_ comprehend?”

“I know well enough what happened,” the boy claims, with that tone of entitlement that has always put me on edge. “I heard about that little Russian boy, too.” He smirks in the same way that someone who has delivered the winning piece of an argument would smirk.

And in some ways, he _has_ delivered the winning piece of the argument. I can deal with when an ignorant fool makes comments about me, because I am not affected by them. But when they make comments about Alexei, who has already suffered too much in his lifetime and should not suffer from within the grave, that is where I draw the line. Alexei has done nothing to deserve these remarks, but he has no way to defend himself if he’s dead. I have to do it for him.

However, as I said before, these boys feed off of my angered reactions, therefore it is my duty to provide them with none. I say nothing in defense of neither myself nor Alexei.

The boy is able to interpret my silence with his own filter, and he infers all that can be inferred by someone who doesn’t know the complete story. “What, was he your little prostitute or something, and that’s why you didn’t want to shoot the Russian bastard?”

His gang of morons behind him snickers, while I continue to say nothing. This boy has pulled me back around into calmness, but I have commenced the cycle once more, and he pulls me into the anger section again. I begin to shake with rage.

The boy notices my clear signs of fury, and he takes them as an indication of his success in triggering me. “Oh, excuse-moi, did I hit a soft spot?” he asks in a condescending voice so typical of young rich boys.

I cannot hold my rage inside of me for any longer, even after testing out all of the methods that I usually test out. I approach real life topics in the same way that I approach war, and I have concluded that my next option is to go to metaphorical war with the boy. I have tried to reason with this kid, but he is so blinded by his obnoxiousness that he will not listen when I say that he does not understand what actually happened. The negotiation phase is over. It failed. Since he is so obsessed with fighting, I’m sure he will find this useful. Maybe I can give him a taste of what actual war is like, seeing as he doesn’t understand it in the slightest. I do what I have to do.

While he’s still cackling with his buddies and soaking in his new found glory, I take the opportunity to drive my fist right into his face, swinging from the right side to hit his left cheek. It definitely takes him by surprise, and his friends go dead silent, their faces suspended in astonishment and a supplementary portion of fear of what I could do to them.

This isn’t what I usually do to people that I disagree with, but this is a new Olivier Renaud with whom I live, the Olivier Renaud that made it through intense military training and that won’t condone rich boys’ notions of dominance when there is none in the harsh reality that they inhabit.

The boy feels the left hemisphere of his head for any damage to his pristine face that he often uses in his elite settings to cheat unsuspecting, gullible women out of an orgasm. Pretending to be focused on surveying himself, he suddenly attempts to punch me in return by swinging an arm that I block easily. In response, I knock him to the ground as if it’s child’s play.

By this point, his gang has retreated from the street to hide who knows where, and the citizens around us all scurry to get away from the scene, fearing that they will be next. I don’t even notice that the boy’s friends are gone or that the people on the streets are rushing away from me, though, as I am too engrossed in my moral mission of teaching this kid a lesson that he will always remember before considering assuming things about other humans before he knows the complete story.

The boy looks up at me from his inferior position on the cobblestone, one arm poised as a weak barrier between me and him, and using the other one to slowly and unsuccessfully scoot away from me. Blood winds down his septum and onto his swollen lips, some of it slipping inside to give him a taste of the putridness that he is made up of. “Please,” he sputters through his now fragmented voice. He looks too much like Alexei in this stance, so much like when Alexei was pleading for me and Gauthier to spare him but was denied. I can’t bear it. I let the boy off with a warning that will hopefully guide him into better judgment.

“You don’t fucking know me,” I spit, spinning my back away from the boy and leaving him to recover on the ground. It is my hope that he has learned something from this experience.

**~~~~~**

**A/N: who knew Olivier was such a savage gotDAM**

**but seriously, I really hope that bitch ass hobe learned smth**

**~Dakotobe**


	20. why tho

[Music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnXw509V9as)

An antagonized scream ripples through my chamber and through the cracks in the floorboards of my room, sliced bits of my agony slipping down into the lower floor and to the other rooms next to mine. Heavy breaths of air forced to hastily replenish themselves pump rapidly through my lungs and out of my mouth. My skin is moist, populated by droplets containing fleeing memories of my most recent dream -- or a nightmare, really.

Ever since I returned from war and the scene with Alexei, I have been experiencing frequent nightmares -- and by frequent, I mean every single night -- and they are usually of the same event, or a distorted version of the same event, the event that haunts me the most. I am utterly traumatized by what I saw on the battlefield and in the infirmary and even in the lack of prospects in the soldiers at camp when they were docile at that specific moment, but it still cannot compare to how I feel about what happened to Alexei. It never leaves me, especially because the possibility that I caused his death directly is a very _likely_ possibility.

Even though it is late at night, I hear voices from downstairs. I must have woken them up with my screaming. They do not speak in a normal volume, rather a hushed one to avoid waking other people up or -- more plausible -- to avoid having me hear them talk about me.

“What is wrong with our boy?” my mother asks desperately, the first time that she’s cared about me since I learned how to talk.

“He is scarred from war, Marie,” replies my father in an attempt to console her, but all that I hear is a truth that he has never accepted before, and in some ways I feel grateful that he finally has, despite the fact that he led me down this road by shoving me into the military.

I detect a soft knocking at my door, and automatically I know that it is my sister coming to check on me like she often does. I do not vocally invite her inside, but she takes my lack of words as a lack of protest, and she cracks the door open. The light from the hallway illuminates her delicate features that are then concealed in darkness again as she closes the door, until she blesses a candle with fire, which she brings over towards the bed and sets on my nightstand as she sits beside me.

“My dearest Olivier…” Lourdes draws out in a gentle tone. She reaches out to stroke my hair to comfort me, though I do not meet her eyes, yet she continues, because she knows how much I am in need of any sort of affection from another human being, how much I am in need of a reminder that there are people in this world who love me, even if the number is a low one.

Lourdes watches me suspiciously, softly curved brows now tight together. “Another nightmare?” she asks.

Still quiet, I nod.

She shakes her head slowly, not wanting to believe the reality of how things are now, and her thumb swipes my cheek as she whispers, “Where has my dear brother gone?”

“I abandoned him the very moment that I stepped onto the battlefield of Borodino.”

I saw too much that day. Death hovered all around me with no traces of sympathy. The air was thick with panic. I witnessed numerous crimes on the battlefield, and I committed some myself. Alexei wasn’t the only person that I killed.

My mind recalls the instance in the graveyard when Alexei and I had just met the day before. He spoke to me of his sister who he felt was dead because of his selfish actions, and he has grieved since the event. He has blamed himself for inadvertently taking someone’s life, even though it was not intentional. Maybe it was made worse _because_ it was unintentional -- maybe he felt as though he could have done something more, could have been less careless. He was truly remorseful for what he did, a sentiment that I could not understand at the time but fully understand now.

He asked me if I knew what it feels like to have somebody else’s blood on my hands. Now I do. And I’m sure as hell going to pay for it.

**~~~~~**

**A/N: this is the end, thanks 4 watching**

**tell me if this one hurt more than my other books**

**~Dakota**  


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